MSNBC and Garden Rant

So if you think you're crazy, you're probably not, right? Really crazy people think they are fine. I learned this bit of wisdom recently on some TV show or other. Last night I had a 500 channels and nothing on moment and ended up watching MSNBC while waiting for Angie Harmon to come on in Rizzoli and Isles on TNT. Fell asleep during the EDshow and woke up with Rachel Maddow. As long as I know the lefty MSNBC is no more "fair and balanced" than Fox News and the other right wing media, I'm still OK, right? Not that I didn't enjoy the bashing of Newt and Mitt, but I understood it as entertainment not news.  Rachel Maddow is no Angie Harmon, by the way, and her ripping Newt for his lobbying connections and greed would have been much more effective without the sarcasm. I think we need to watch out for the people who believe MSNBC or Fox are giving us the "truth."

What the heck is TED? It's a nonprofit started in 1984 to spread "ideas worth sharing." For example, Dr. Christian, the Big History guy who spoke at Stonehill recently did a lecture at a TED conference. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. I'd forgotten about TED until a couple of my students were talking about a TED lecture they had watched as research for Philosophy class. Tried it out last night and watched an interesting 15 minute presentation of algorithms (really!). Checking my sources this morning I came across a garden rant blog about a TED lecture on big agriculture. You can see a really good blog and the link to the TED lecture at this link if you scroll down a little. The manifesto of the four women who do the blog is a hoot. Here is there solution to the agricultural problems suggested in the TED lecture:

1. Change the scale at which agriculture takes place.  Small diverse gardens and farms can produce more food on less land than factory farms, and work in concert with nature, not against it.

2. Substitute human labor for planet-destroying artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery.

3. Listen to the real thinkers, who believe agriculture can be transformed by mimicking natural ecosystems. 

4. Mulch.

  

These are all things we need to think about at Easton's new Agricultural Commission and reminds me that I promised a talk on permaculture awhile ago.

A Social Media Warning

Be warned once again I've started to dabble in the waters of social media. I tried Facebook a couple of years ago and was completely overwhelmed with the nonstop interaction. You have to understand that on most days I wouldn't want to "friend" myself so I was shocked by the number of people who wanted to do that and tell me about their every waking moment. Then my family started to send me cybergifts. I never quite understood if I had to pay to send them flowers (or send their flowers back). Too scary for me and then there was that whole thing about whether to friend or not friend someone. There are lots of former students who I'd like to catch up with, but would they think I'm cyberstalking them? Anyway it was way too much for me.

Enter Google+. This is Google's second attempt at creating a social media site, and it's been in beta testing for several months. As soon as I took the tour, I thought this might be a simple place to create  "circles" for different purposes like town business, NRT business, family, and friends. Of course, I wasn't cybercool enough to get an early invite to try the site even after I asked really nicely. So when I finally got the word that Google had decided I was about the 10 millionth most interesting person in the world and could finally join, I did what every celebrity would do-snubbed them for two weeks. I finally joined up last night. My students tell me that Facebook and Google+ are passé and I should really get on Twitter. This apparently requires more knowledge of my old style cell phone (it really won't cause brain tumors, right?) than I'm likely to possess. So it looks like Google+ is going to be the height of my socializing. This is just a warning to everyone I know that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. You should be honored. I didn't warn the Dalai Lama, Maria Bartiromo, or Serge Brin all of whom I've added to one of my circles. Hope the Dalai Lama doesn't mind being invited to play Mafia Wars 2, the Pope doesn't appear to be on Google+.

Restarting the Economy

On CyberFriday I managed to make it to Coriander's for lunch. It was packed with folks who had apparently spent the morning shopping. I felt bad that I hadn't saved the American economy by shopping on Black Friday so I determined to spend money on Small Business Saturday. By the way, I remember the days when you saved the American economy by building a factory so I was thrilled to have an opportunity to help out in my price range.

I started my day at the Bass Pro Shop, certainly not a small business. I thought it was important to help them make rent so Bob Kraft could continue to spend money on the Patriots. Bass Pro also sells my favorite winter socks. Imagine a pair of thick comfy socks with a lifetime guarantee. They aren't guaranteed against the loss of one sock in the wash, but into their second year my first pair is still going strong. I bought three pairs. I don't think they're guaranteed for three consecutive lifetimes, but I'm going to put them in my will just in case.

I imagine in points south Bass Pro was mobbed with gun crazed hunters, but this is Massachusetts so most folks on the first floor were buying clothes. The gun crazed hunters all seemed to be concentrated on the stairs where the kids were playing shooting games. In the basement next to the giant fish tank, Cabot Cheese had set up a sampling station. I learned that while Cabot's great cheese is made in Vermont, milk is collected all over New England including West Bridgewater. Cabot, of course, is known for its great cheddar, but they are branching out into flavored cheeses. On display were the ubiquitous pepper jack, and in their second season both a Chipotle cheese and a Habanero  cheese. My favorite was a horseradish cheese.

Finally, after fighting my way through the crowds in the regular fishing department, I found myself as the only person in the fly fishing department. Why folks don't love fly fishing instead of just plunking a lure in the water, I'll never understand. Maybe it has something to do with actually catching big fish. Anyway after buying four expensive, nontraditional flies that should attract the giant bass I've heard about, but never caught. I headed for the checkout and only ended up with two impulse buys, a  DVD called Crappie Secrets Uncovered and a camoflauge throw blanket. The DVD was about the fish not about investigating fourth rate Egyptian tombs with Zahi Hawass.

Returning to the sacred ground of Easton, I had to decide between shopping at my two favorite small businesses, the Village Toy Store or Paperback Junction. Putting Christmas shopping off for another week, I headed for Paperback Junction. What I like about both these places is the person service. At the Village Toy Store, I update them on Bella and Lily, my youngest cousins and the helpful people point me in the right direction for great toys in my price range. I've been shopping at Paperback Junction for over twenty years, and despite the lure of Amazon.com and my Barnes and Noble Nook I still go in weekly because Tricia Peterson usually has something she'll know I'll like. Unfortunately, my buying exceeds my reading so right know I need three lifetime guarantees to catch up. Stop writing and read is probably the best thing for me. Buy local and keep two great businesses going is good advice for all of us.

The Peasants are Revolting and Pea Safety

I've been away from the blog for a few days researching Easton's Revolutionary War veterans. You may remember I got a list of about 60 people buried in Easton who had flags on their graves for Revolutionary War service. The problem was to verify their service and find more veterans for a potential monument. Using Chaffin's History, the list of potential warrior Eastonites grew to over 400. Then the problems started. If the militia included men from 16 to 60, then a grandfather could be serving with his grandson, and, of course, they could  have the same name in a time when folks weren't always consistent with adding "Junior" or "the third." Then there is the fact that a certain percentage of my "suspects" weren't Eastoners. Two categories here: folks enlisted to fill out quotas who could come from quite far away and neighbors on our borders who found it more convenient to serve with our militia rather than their own.

How am I solving the puzzle? Lists, lists upon lists, and more lists. Right now you are on the monument if you were included in the 1771 tax evaluation, were included in Chaffin's History for service, and were a family head here in the 1790 census. You're also in if you have a service record, were here either in 1771 and 1790 and you're buried in Easton according to Melanie Deware's indispensable list. If you were a Randall included in Rev. Chaffin's genealogy of that family, and the good Reverend confirms your birth and service and knew where your mortal remains were planted you're in also.

Using these criteria we now have about 100 potential veterans (although we still need to sort out fathers and juniors) with another hundred with two out of three criteria. Unfortunately, that leaves about two hundred more men with a service record and nothing else. The answer, of course, is more lists. There's a 1757 militia list, a 1776 census, and a 1777 militia list still to be added. The latter two are "missing" in the Historical Society's fireproof safe which is a miniature version of the warehouse where Indiana Jones' Lost Ark is stored. There are also tax books from the Revolutionary era that are spending a few days in my living room guarded by the ever vigilant Maggie.

Here's an interesting article from The Smart Set, a magazine from Drexel University. It details the plant experiments of Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose. Bose was one of the pioneers in the invention of radio, but the article focuses on his experiments were he hooked up a vegetable to an electrical circle and then interacted with it. The experiments proved that plants like animals react to stimuli in the environment sometimes in surprising ways. For example, he learned that a fresh pea gives off a jolt of electricity equal to a half volt when it dies in boiling water. This means that the typical serving of fresh peas gives off enough electricity to kill you if all the jolts were organized in series!  It's a fascinating article that shows there isn't as much difference between plants and animals as you might think.

Swan II

Well, I'll be damned things have changed in the last 400 years. The best source for the natural history of southern New England in the Pilgrim era is William Wood, New England Prospect, 1634. I hadn't read the book in years, but I remembered it and turned to it this afternoon to solve the Thanksgiving Swan problem. Wood was a good observer and a fine writer. He may have exaggerated a little to make New England seem attractive to potential settlers, but I find him pretty accurate. Here's what he has to say about Turkey's (the archaic spelling is retained):

The Turky is a very large Bird, of a blacke colour, yet white in flesh; much bigger than our English Turky. He hathe the use of his long legs so ready, that he can runne as fast as a Dogge and flye as well as a Goose: of these sometimes there will be forty, threescore, and a hundred of a flocke, sometimes more and sometimes lesse; their feeding is Acornes, Hawes, and Berries, some of them get a haunt to frequent our English corne…somehave killed ten or a dozen in halfe a day…. These Turkies remaine all the year long, the price of a good Turkie cocke is foure shillings; and he is well worth it , for he may be in weight forty pound; a Hen two shillings. 

Wood got the color, running ability, and diet correct. I'm not sure about the flying ability and the size of the flocks is certainly bigger than we see today. A forty pound cock Turkey also seems a little excessive especially if it had to fly! The English Turkey wasn't a native, by the way, it had been introduced to England from Spain who discovered it in Mexico.

Wood mentions three kinds of goose. One is the Brant, a small goose that still winters on the coast. The largest goose described is clearly today's Canada Goose which in the good old days was a migrant species. A Canada goose could be bought for a shilling and a half. The third goose is the medium sized Snow Goose. Here's what Wood says about that:

The second kind is a white Goose, almost as big as an English tame Goose, these come in great flockes about Michelmasse [September 29], sometimes there will be two or three thousand in a flocke, these continue six weeks [to mid-November], and so fly to the southward, returning in March, and staying six weekes more, returning againe to the Northward; the price of one of theses is eight pence. 

So in Pilgrim times there were lots of Snow Geese in Massachusetts just at the time of the first Thanksgiving. The pattern of migration is the same as today only the numbers are different. Did we hunt out this northern population? Have the geese gotten better at navigating to Maryland and points south? How much did Wood exaggerate?

Finally, the Swan:

There be likewise many Swannes which frequent the fresh ponds and rivers, seldom conforting themselves with Duckes and Geese; these be very good meate, the price of one is six shillings.

 

We have "many" instead of solid numbers like we have for the Turkey and Snow Goose. The word frequent is used in its older sense of inhabiting, and the fact that swans seldom were seen on ponds with ducks and geese points to a certain scarcity as does the price for a bird that would be half the weight of a 40 pound turkey. Of course, the swan was "very good meate" and a traditional meal for the rich so it may have fetched a premium. Wood included a fairly extensive glossary of Wampanoag words at the end of his book. He includes Indian words for duck, goose, and turkey, but not swan for whatever that's worth.

To conclude, you could have swan for Thanksgiving if you were a Pilgrim, but it seems you'd have to work a lot harder to find one than to get a turkey or a goose. Still it appears that climate change which seem to be making the Massachusetts coast more attractive to Swans and Snow Geese has not been a factor in the decline in the local population. Looks like we shot out the birds                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Swan at the First Thanksgiving

Bear with me as this blog starts with a fish story. I was listening to an archaeology podcast yesterday that was using ancient mosaics to help preserve an endangered Mediterranean fish. The fish, a delicacy has been overfished for centuries and is now difficult to find outside of relatively deep water. Ancient Roman mosaics show much larger versions of this fish, a grouper, being caught from shore. The pictures are backed up by Pliny the Elder who wrote about the fish and the fishing methods before he turned his attention to watching Mt. Vesuvius erupt-still waiting for his report on that. It turns out that in protected ocean sanctuaries the fish still behaves like it did in Roman times and while not quite as large as it was then, it is bigger on average than fish in unprotected areas.

That got me thinking about a well done article in the Boston Globe about the first Thanksgiving. Nothing too new here. I used to do a presentation for third graders about the foods of the first Thanksgiving and the sources are pretty sparse. That's why I was surprised to see swan on the menu in this year's article. The swans we see swimming around places like the Norton Reservoir today are Mute Swans, a species introduced from Europe to decorate 19th century estates with their beauty and lousy dispositions. To the Pilgrims this was their swan from home, but there is no evidence they brought this bird with them. I knew that in the pamphlet "Hockomock Wonder Wetland"(still available online) author Kathleen Anderson included Whistling Swan (Cygnus columbianus) as a rare migrant in our area. This bird is also known as the Tundra Swan and it is indeed rare in Bristol County. The birds look more goose-like than the Mute Swan since they lack the typical curved swan neck. They range from 7.5 to 21 pounds with 15 pounds being average; Mute Swans are substantially larger. As the name tundra indicates these swans breed in the Arctic. The birds are migratory and the easternmost population winters on the coast from Maryland south to Florida. Every once and awhile a bird's compass  messes up, and it ends up here. In Plymouth County you might expect to see one Tundra Swan in a day of bird watching. The only problem is that in the last century all the records of Tundras in Plymouth County come from the return migration in March and April. No Tundra Swan reports come from the September to early November period when we believe the first Thanksgiving took place. Here in Bristol County you have almost no chance of seeing a Tundra Swan. However, it looks from the record that the ONE that was seen was seen in November. If you wanted a white waterfowl for Thanksgiving you'd have a much better chance of gunning down a 7 pound Snow Goose. These birds follow the same migration pattern as the Tundra Swan, but many more end up on our coast. Again the peak period is the late winter/early spring (that's when I saw mine in Easton), but there are strays in Plymouth county in October and November.

On the other hand, observers from the Hampshire Birding Club reported 19 Tundra Swans on the Quabbin on November 20, 2010. Here's the link to the picture. The photographer thought this was incredible and so do I. Why all the fuss? On my part I know that migration patterns of birds are susceptible to relatively quick changes due to climate change so the idea that there might have been enough swans here for Thanksgiving dinner might be a clue to our climate. Here's the problem though. The pilgrims arrived here at the end of the Little Ice Age so our climate was cooler than today's even without factoring in human caused global warming. If the swans like to spend the winter in warmer whether wouldn't they have been less likely to have been here in Pilgrim times? In fact, the photo from the Quabbin may be an indication that the birds are expanding their winter range northward today and that they were even rarer in 1621. I'm posting now, but I'll check on some historical records and finish this story tomorrow! My advice-stick with turkey!

Owen O'Learys Beast Feast

Once or twice a year Owen O'Learys, just over the line in Brockton, offers a three course wild game menu. It's open to question just how "wild" the animals actually are and the menu quite accurately also calls the menu items "exotics" since they are most often raised on game farms. The menu is offered for two nights only with Thursday, November 17 as the second day. The cost of the meal is $21.99 and if you are not a regular at some fru-fru French restaurant where one perfect asparagus spear and a slice of raw duck breast makes a meal, then you should adjust your portion size expectation downwards. That's not a criticism. Owen O'Leary's usually provides a normal Amerian sized dinner, but the Beast Feast makes up in elegance what it lacks in shear size.

The menu offers two appetizers, a soup or salad, and your choice of four main courses. I'm mentioning the meal here today because the choices this time allows you to create a meal that could have been eaten at a fancy restaurant in the 19th century. Thus, I started with an appetizer of Fried Rocky Mountain Oysters with Spicy Cocktail Sauce. The dish was actually a single "oyster," that part of the bull that makes a bull a bull, flattened, breaded and fried. This dish was a popular dish among gentlemen of the Gilded Age because, like real oysters, it was considered an aphrodisiac. In reality the dish didn't have much flavor on its own-certainly not like a real oyster, but the cocktail sauce was an excellent blend of sweet tomato, spiciness, and an undertone of smoke.  The next course was turtle soup, the highlight of the night. I've eaten alligator and yes, it does taste like a slightly fishy, chewy version of chicken. Turtle doesn't taste like chicken. It's a dark meat that infuses the thick brown broth with a rich, mild gamey quality. The Owen O'Leary version was well made with carrot, corn, and beans adding their accents to the soup.

Don't know what species of turtle was used. As I said in a recent article, it's illegal to use sea turtle in soup in the United States. In fact, any turtle population can't be sustainably harvested due to the slow reproductive rates of turtles. An exception might be the snapping turtle which is the traditional reptile of choice for American turtle soup. You can find snapping turtle soup from Bookbinders, an old Philadelphia food company and restaurant, in supermarkets. Turtle soup was the favorite meal of President "Big Bill" Taft. My favorite soup remains Maguire's cream of roasted garlic and onion soup, but the turtle soup last night is up there. I'm going to search out a recipe for it and mock turtle soup as well.

The main course was goose. I like geese as pets and watch animals-they have sass and are funny, but I've never had much luck cooking goose. The result has often been chewy. The serving last night was a part of a sliced goose breast with a pomegranate and tangerine sauce and wild rice with goose cracklings. About half the breast meat was chewy! Geese fly and flap and build up muscle in the breast so toughness is apparently to be expected. The taste was a stronger version of duck and the sauce was infinitely better than the typical orange sauce used with duck. Pieces of mandarin "orange"ddd and pomegranate seeds served as a garnish to the sauce which was tasty without being cloyingly sweet. It did not obscure the flavor of the goose. Crunching the seeds gave a burst of flavor that was very pleasing. Probably not a sauce one would have found at Delmonico's for their roast goose, but delicious none the less. The wild rice was superb. The real stuff with a smaller than normal percentage of white rice enriched by the crackings and some goose fat. By the time I was done with my three courses I had come to envy Diamond Jim Brady who dined like this every night!

Talk about a Revolution

The veteran's put flags on the graves of soldiers buried in Easton. In elder days they actually printed a book with the names of the decorated graves. Today, I suppose they have a list somewhere. That's where the Revolutionary War project begins. The list given to me by Al Smart contains 65 names of Revolutionary War soldiers whose graves are decorated plus 10 mystery names.

You can begin to see my problem if you turn to Chaffin's History of Easton and write down the names of men who served in 1775. The list quickly jumps to 261 names. Now many of these names are duplicates. One of my favorite Rev War soldiers is Hopestill Randall-he owned part of the Sheep Pasture property, and Hopestill is a great name. He is buried in the cemetery at the corner of Elm and Washington Streets so he made the original list. He also marched to Boston on April 19, 1775 with the East Militia Company so he is listed twice in my spreadsheet. Now the math wizards have already figured out that if all the cemetery guys went asoldiering once in 1775 there would still be 120 new names added to the list. Remember also that the war lasted until 1783, and you realize this could be a long list.

Furthermore, Chaffin notes that just about every able bodied man served outside Easton at least once. This makes sense since every male between 16 and 60 except Quakers, the town minister, and the disabled were supposed to be in the town militia. Throw in child musicians and the fact that 10 year olds in 1775 would be old enough to serve when the last troops went out in 1781 and the situation begins to get complicated. Even with everyone serving Easton couldn't meet state quotas so some out-of-towners served "for" Easton. Who were they and do we include them on our memorial?

Then there are the three Joseph Drakes, the three Thomas Drakes, the two Samuel Guilds, and, well you get the idea. Does every name on the memorial have to be associated with a real person? Thankfully, one of the Joe Drakes is listed as "ye third" in 1775, but are the ones who are not specified  "ye first" or "ye second" or both. Clearly access to primary sources is going to be needed. Armchair research is only going to take you so far (although further than when I made my original card stack in the 1970s).

The complexities of this historical project probably explain why we don't have a memorial listing all who served in our founding war. The complexities and the fact that no one wants to be haunted by the ghost of Joseph Drake "ye left off the list." 

Drafted, Diet, and Permaculture

 A busy day so a short posting. The Easton Historical Society has an open house today, and I'll be spending my time working with our new computer, researching some issues for the Hall of Fame, and starting work on a new project. Al Smart and a Select Committee have been working to generate a list of all the men who served in the Revolutionary War in hopes of creating a long overdue memorial for these folks who fought to found our country. Once upon a time in the age before desktop computers I had just such a record in notebooks and cards. Now I'll be starting from scratch on a spreadsheet.

The great diet experiment also starts tomorrow so I have to figure out what to eat in my three meals, two snacks and 2,000 calories. Goldfish are definitely on the snack menu.

I promised a blog on permaculture over the weekend, but the research has gotten away from me. Lots of stuff out there. I recommend starting with the Wikipedia entry. More soon.

Goldfish, Town Planning, and Honey

The convenience store at the end of Columbus Avenue just got in 130 calorie packets of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish @69¢. Why is this news? Heifer International's Overlook Farm in Rutland has a display of a trailer home in rural America which explains that in the boondocks small convenience stores are a way of life-think about getting good nutrition for a family at a convenience store. We're very lucky our "Li'l Peach" has fruit and yogurt, but the Goldfish are by far the healthiest snack type food in the place. This situation isn't from lack of effort on the part of the owner either. She has added a number of snack foods that are a little better than the traditional chips. Knowing a little about the business of grocery stores from my days as an economics teacher, I suppose a Whole Food convenience store empire is unlikely to develop here,  but it's an attractive idea. Unfortunately, a twinkie is shelf life immortal while healthy prepared food has to turn over quickly.

How does this tie-in with town planning? Well, I was checking out a news feed from Earthtechling and came across a reference to Walk Score, a cool website that should be in the toolbox of our excellent town planning department. Walk Score uses a variety of GPS based web sources to rank your address for walking to local conveniences like restaurants and stores. It's a "smart" growth favorable site, because the paradigm is that you should be living in a five story building with a beauty parlor, school, five restaurants, and a supermarket on the other four floors. Just in case anyone forgot about how I feel about "smart" growth! The idea is that things you might want to go to that are within a quarter mile get a top score while things that are a mile away get a zero. It rates the walkability of your home without, as it clearly states, the scenic qualities of the walk (or your chance to get mugged, slip in vomit, or trip over an Occupy protestor-just in case you forgot about how I feel about cities). My house got a 22 on a scale of 0 (center of the Hockomock) to 100 (downtown NYC). I'm a mile away from the bright lights of Rt. 138 and a little more to Shaw's Plaza.  Walking back home after dropping my car off to be serviced on Bay Road takes a half hour. Thank God for Fernandes Lumber or Maggie and I would be a wilderness family. Much as I love the suburbs and walking, that's not right.

In simpler times Easton had 10 school districts marking circles of easy walking around those schools. Almost all of these districts had their own general store. Hubs like Five Corners, South Easton Green, and North Easton had more amenities, but basic needs could be met within walking distance. That still happens in North Easton, and it could happen in other parts of town, even mine, if we find a way to convince people that they won't be mowed down by cars as they walk along. Crossing Route 123 isn't something I want to do on a regular basis so I drive to Fernandes-so stupid!

Here's a good warning for you. Don't buy honey unless you know and trust the person selling it. Buy from a beekeeper. A recent exposé has shown that most supermarket honey is ultrafiltered to remove pollen. Pollen is the only way you can tell where the honey was made so ultrafilitration is used to disguise imported honey from places like China where the honey has been shown to be contaminated with antibiotics and heavy metal. The FDA does not inspect honey as a general rule so there is lots of room for cheating. I'll reserve comment on the political aspects of regulation for another time. Well, no I won't. The current Republican push for less government regulation is bought and paid for by people like the ones who want to sell you dirty honey. Too bad Teddy Roosevelt isn't running in the 2012 Republican primaries-the party might be able to win back its soul (the Democrats need to buy a brain, by the way).

Richard James Hart-World War I Veteran

I was researching Richard Harte, the last family member to run the Ames Shovel Company, when I ran across Richard Hart, a World War I veteran from New York. Wait til you hear, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

Richard James Hart was born in Brooklyn in 1892. He left home for Nebraska in 1908 with the idea of joining a circus. A strong, muscular kid he traveled all over the mid-west with the circus working hard to lose his Brooklyn accent, learning to use a gun, and meeting Indians with whom he became fascinated. When the United States entered World War I, he quickly enlisted. His marksmanship and the discipline learned from the circus attracted attention and he was made a first lieutenant. His tour of duty was uneventful, but he could be proud that he was the only member of his family to serve his country.

After the war he returned to Nebraska and took up residence in Homer where in 1919 he rescued a young woman named Kathleen Winch and her family from a flash flood. He soon ended up marrying the girl and settled down in Homer. But "How Ya Going To Keep'em Down on the Farm after They've Seen Paree?" The veteran wanted more excitement in life and when Prohibition came into effect in 1920 he became a Prohibition enforcement agent. He soon got a reputation for aggressively smashing illegal stills in Nebraska where he also helped to keep the peace arresting horse thieves and other criminals. He got the nickname Two-Gun Hart for the pearl handled pistols he wore. In 1926 in addition to his work in Prohibition enforcement, he took a job with the U.S. Indian Service moving his wife and four sons to a series of reservations. During this time he is credited with bringing 20 killers to justice. Headlines across the Midwest built the legend of Two-Gun Hart and he even served as a bodyguard for President Coolidge when he visited the Black Hills.

Two years before Prohibition ended, Hart returned to Homer where he served for many years as town marshal and taught his sons and grandchildren a lot about hunting and the outdoor life. .

For many years Hart had no contact with his family, many of whom had moved from New York to Chicago. In the early 1940's he visited his brother's Ralph and John in Sioux City, Iowa. He then went on to Chicago to visit his elderly mother Theresa. It was only after that visit that he told his wife and children that his brother was another man who had skill leading men with guns-Alphonse Capone. In the early '20s Italian immigrants were subject to a lot of prejudice in farm country so James Vincenzo Capone became Richard Hart. Al's reign of terror had ended long before Richard's visit to Chicago. In fact, Al had been paroled in 1939 to live out his life with incurable syphilis. Richard and his son Harry finally met Al in Brookfield, Wisconsin in 1946. Al had only a few months to live and his disease had by then left him with the intellect of a 12 year old. Richard Hart died in 1952 from a heart attack. His eldest son, Richard, Jr. had been killed in action in World War II. Richard Hart-an American life that needs a movie!

Here and There Thursday

If you haven't heard, Rick Perry's presidential campaign self-destructed last night. There's lots of ways I could go with this story, but I've had too many of those brain freezes myself to follow my natural inclination to make fun of a guy who wants to get rid of the education department, but can't remember a list that is three items long. The evidence is pretty clear that Perry isn't smart enough to be president and that Herman Cain is the second coming of Horny Bill Clinton. I guess it's a good thing that the far right of the Republican Party, which somehow managed to survive Cheney-Bush, is sinking like a stone leaving a grown-up candidate like Mitt Romney as the front runner. The sad thing is that both Obama and Romney are so enthrall to special interests that once again nothing good will happen about the key issue of the age-human induced climate change.

I've become addicted to my Nook news aggregator apps Pulse and Taptu. Pulse allows you to organize 60 news sources into five pages while the newer Taptu allows you to select a hundred sources and then mix them into single feeds. One Taptu created mix checks 27 sources at once!  Pulse is more like a newspaper while Taptu captures a lot of the cacophony of the internet. My Front Page on Pulse includes feeds from the Enterprise, Easton Journal, and Easton Patch. I don't know how that business model is supposed to work, but I love having the latest local news at my finger tips. It's like the days of my childhood when the family listened to WJDA in Quincy for the local news for the Braintree area and the latest from Bob and Ray.

Unfortunately, I've organized my Taptu feeds with a dozen environmental sites at the top-very depressing! It doesn't help that I followed that up with a half dozen sites on dinosaurs-the destination we're heading for if we don't do something about the environment. I should definitely move the political feeds to the top-there's something to be said for starting the day with the comics.

Interesting story in the Journal about the proposed Beech Tree Estates on Deport Street. It would be an open space residential development that would put 4 homes on three acres of a 16 acre site. The houses would be about 500 feet from the street so the site would retain its rural character. OSRDs are the best of the newer development tools available in Easton because they preserve a lot of open space, but we shouldn't forget that any residential development is likely to be property tax negative since most homes receive more in town services-mostly schools-than they pay in taxes. Don't know why we still don't require 150 acres per house lot like we did when the town was founded! Even a McMansion would blend into that much space.

Permaculture is a combination of landscaping and horticulture that aims at producing food (for both people and animals) year after year while mimicing a natural landscape. I've been fascinated with this for years and will be blogging on it over the weekend. Tomorrow is Veteran's Day so expect something soldierish as I struggle to come up with a speech for our parade.

Diet 2

There's a fun story, probably apocryphal, about the great Scottish skeptic David Hume. He and a friend were walking by a pasture when the friend said "It seems Farmer Brown has sheared his sheep." To which Hume replied "At least on this side." I think, given all the contradictory recommendations floating around today about food, one must be at least this skeptical when talking about diets.

The Eat This, Not That No Diet Diet has a target area of between 1400 and 2400 calories in daily intake. I've been told to aim for no more than 60 grams of carbohydrates in any one meal and some nutritionists suggest around 45 grams. One gram of carbohydrate is equal to four calories so the daily total should be between 540 and 720 calories per day from carbs.

Fat is controversial also. The old US Department of Agriculture  recommendation was to limit fat input to 30% of your calories or less and to avoid saturated fats. Now the USDA  is suggesting that  20-25% of the diet should be fat, and that saturated fats might not be as bad as once thought although monounsaturated fats are best. The math gets tricky because a gram of fat is 9 calories unliks the 4 calories found in carbs and proteins.

Finally, the USDA recommends between 15-35% of your calorie intake should come from protein. To me as a diabetic I figured that the carbohydrate figures were the important ones to build around, but then I ran into a problem because total carbs have to be divided into three meals and two snacks. Ultimately, I had to do some juggling. My diet goal will be around 2,000 calories a day of which 35% comes from carbs, 45% from protein, and 20% from fat. This is pretty close to my doctor's recommendation and allows me, hopefully, to allocate the carbs in meals and snacks correctly.

OK, if you've stuck with me so far, you've earned a couple of days off from diet talk. Stay tuned tomorrow for the latest amazing story from around the internet.

Working Towards a Diet

OK, I eat out too much. Lunch at TD's deli. Dinner any number of places. I've packed on 15 pounds on my already not so svelte frame since March. Part of that is due to a new medication I take for my diabetes, but the disease just complicates the whole thing. On a good day I have a fine breakfast, and then screw up lunch-submarine sandwiches or fried food or nothing at all, when I'm home for dinner I cook good healthy food, but eat too much. What a mess! There is good news due to the wonders of modern chemistry my A1C blood sugar score is under 7 and my total cholesterol has only jumped from 98 to 113.

So, a need to reform and eat healthy. Research in diet books has led me to the new USDA plate graph that has replaced the old food pyramid, Rick Gallop's The G.I. (Glycemic Index) Diet, and the Eat This, Not That No Diet Diet as sources of ideas. The glycemic index is a measure of the simple versus complex carbohydrates in a food with the idea that a diabetic is better off with the complex variety (and a low limit on all carbs-no more than 60 grams a meal). I've mentioned the Eat This, Not That series before. The idea with their diet is to get between 400-600 calories at breakfast, 300-600 for lunch, and a dinner of 400-700. Two snacks of 150-250 calories would be allowed as well. The idea of multiple small meals is a key to every diabetic diet. The nice thing about the Eat This people is that they give details on ways to eat on the road so I don't have to be home to eat well.

I should be able to cobble together a good diet here if I just pay attention, but what about the social and environmental costs of food. Enter the other books that are suddenly on my reading list: Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food; Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet, Anna Lappé's Diet for a Hot Planet, and Mike Berners-Lee's How Bad are Bananas?. I'm going to try to figure out a diet that is fun to eat, but that doesn't increase my carbon footprint or take up more than my fair share of the resources of the world. The good news is that before I'm reduced to eating local roots and berries I have a lot of reading to do. I think I'll start with the diet and move on to the social responsibility and until I finish the diet books-bring on the fryolator chicken fingers! OK, I'm starting the new diet Monday, I promise!

A Call for a New Hall of Fame

The OA Athletic Hall of Fame has finally gotten around to selecting students who played during my time at the school. This year a number of “girls” (one, a former student, is now a colleague!) from our state championship soccer teams and the forerunners of our championship basketball teams are being inducted. All excellent choices, but today, I would like to argue that the time has come to develop a new Hall of Fame to honor all graduates of Oliver Ames who have made major accomplishments in life. I’ve mentioned two other students from this era before-Stephanie Hoffman and Erin Dewey. Both were stars on the Mock Trial Team which like the soccer and basketball teams engages in interscholastic competition. Stephanie should just about be completing her time at the Navy’s Top Gun flight school while Erin is the editor of the BC Law Review and is about to begin a clerkship with the federal Circuit Court of Appeals, the second highest court in the country. Both young women have built amazing stories in just a few years, but neither is ever going to get into our Hall of Fame as it is currently constituted.

The purpose of a Hall of Fame is to honor the accomplishments of the inductees, but at a school it can also serve to encourage others to excellence. Selecting any Hall of Fame is daunting process. Look at baseball. Inevitably you induct someone like Addie Joss or Candy Cummings who don’t hit the highest standards and then everyone begins to doubt the whole process. Cummings is in baseball’s Hall of Fame as the possibly legendary inventor of the curveball (in Worcester, believe it or not) although his official designation is as an executive of an early baseball league. Joss died tragically after compiling a 160 and 97 record in his eight years in the majors-he got in for what might have been not what was. And don’t get me started comparing Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter and Luis Tiant-what a joke.

With sports Halls of Fame, you at least have statistics to fall back on. How do you create a broader Hall without succumbing to politics, emotions, or cloudy memories? Obviously, the Hall should only be open to OA graduates with the exception of those folks who didn’t officially graduate due to military service. Second, the primary selection criteria should be contributions to others-“What good does it do a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” That would be a nice antidote to the “me first” sense of entitlement that is rampant in today’s students. Third, categories should be established with career specific criteria since its hard to compare say a legal career with a career in the arts. Excellence should be a prime criterion in every category. Categories could include: military, the arts, law, public service, education, medicine, and the sciences. I’d start the process with historical research and posthumous awards for the graduates from the period 1869 when our high school opened until about 1930. Anyone who graduated in 1930 would be over 100 years old by the time the new Hall opened. Once we took care of the early graduates, the process would become similar to the athletic Hall of Fame with public recommendations supported by evidence supplementing the obvious choices like soldiers who made the supreme sacrifice for their town and country. A final criterion would be that eligibility wouldn’t open until people were out of school for 25 years since this is to be a “lifetime” (eligibility would begin around age 43) achievement award.

Stay tuned. Tomorrow we begin a new series on food. Can you create a healthy and affordable diet that is socially and environmentally responsible?

Handicapping versus Gambling

My dad was trained in what, in the 1930s, passed for genetics. He made his living working for a large poultry firm breeding laying hens. His avocation was breeding race horses so I spent a lot of my first dozen years hanging around stables and race tracks. I still love horse racing and race horses, and yesterday was the Breeders' Cup-nine races featuring the best horses in the world. Americans don't pay much attention to horse racing today which is a shame because it is an exciting sport with the intellectual component that young people love in fantasy football. My father taught me to read the racing form shortly after I learned my Dick and Jane. Today, the average racing form has enough information to make the typical baseball stat nerd's head spin. Luckily, stuff that once had to be calculated from raw data now are provided in the form.

Yesterday's races took place in Kentucky, but Easton no longer has a barber shop with a bookie operation (older Eastoners will know who I mean!). Luckily the corporation that runs Churchill Downs provides an online betting service (www.twinspires.com) that allows gambling on tracks around the world including harness racing. Back in May, I signed up, put the required $50 in, and began betting. Yesterday I bet every single race in the Breeders Cup, a behavior just barely within the pale of family tradition.

My dad would never bet on a race where he couldn't pick out the single horse which he thought would win. If he couldn't find that one horse, he'd skip the race. Dad had a pretty good formula-find the fastest horses (called speed handicapping) and then check out the horses as they walked around the paddock. I learned a lot about the shape and gait of race horses-you might say I became an expert in horses' asses, and my dad probably picked more winners from finding the healthiest horse than through his mathematical calculations. He had a lot of other rules as well-don't bet on harness races or dogs, don't bet on anything more exotic than a Daily Double because those things were gambling not the science of handicapping. He was also the original "know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em guy." If his $2 bet returned a winner, he still wouldn't invest more than $2 in the next race he bet.

Dad would call me a gambler with wild habits. Earlier in the year I went to work at handicapping "going" to Santa Anita in California every day for a couple of weeks and like dad often passing on races. Where I fell into apostasy was in betting on more than one horse in a betable race. I often bet on two or three horses to win if the odds showed I could get a profit if any one of them won. This coupled with my "system" (too complicated to explain here, but if you'd just send $10…) had skyrocketed me to $164.10 on my original investment of $50 at the start of yesterday. Yes, I do come from a line of tight fisted and risk adverse Yankees, and yes,  I do plan to nickel and dime myself to a million dollars, but hey that's like a 300% return on investment in six months. For those of you tempted to invest the $10, the "system" returns winners more than the 20% of the time most skilled handicappers consider excellent.

Yesterday was a special event so even Dad would have been placing a bet on every race "just to make it interesting." I had to bet early on the first four races since I was going to be at a public event in the afternoon. I returned home to find I had increased my winnings a little by picking off an early race for a small payoff. I settled in for the rest of the afternoon and saw some excellent races. My account jumped to $189 with a second winner before sinking back to $164.10. Not a bad day for special event with very high quality horses which are harder to handicap-I'd have been bummed if it was an ordinary day betting on cheap claiming races. Two winners in eight races, not bad coming into the last race of the day. The first and second favorites was going off at short odds, and neither looked good in my system. I selected the third favorite at 5 to 1 and two horses at above 10 to 1 from the thirteen horse field. The race came through very nicely on my computer screen, and it was very exciting except I looked more and more like a sure loser. Then out of the back of the pack came my 13 to 1 pick charging down the stretch to take and hold the lead. Hooray, $164.10 went to $228 in a flash, but it was the adrenaline rush of seeing a champion horse running as fast as it could that will bring me back for more. That and a little bit of nostalgia for the days when my dad and I used to do this sort of thing together.

The blog is back more or less full time now. Stay tuned this week for blogs on the OA Hall of Fame, tree identification, perennial broccoli, and global warming deniers.