Snow trail

I'm going to be offering a program at the library this spring about tracking animals. The dirty secret is that for much of the year unless a wild animal is kind enough to step into mud or soft sand "tracking" is a euphemism for looking at poop. The snow yesterday actually allowed for real tracking, but would the Governor Ames Estate be accessible?

After shoveling out, I gathered up Maggie for our traditional Sunday breakfast at Back Bay Bagel and then headed over to the park. Someone had already pulled in with a car so I drove through to my usual parking spot with no problem. As I was dressing a somewhat reluctant Maggie in her coat and harness, a rumbling sound was heard and a large Trustees of Reservations pick-up came around the loop with a plow. It looks like the road in the park will remain open throughout the winter.

Maggie and I headed off through the light snow to the big beech tree near the little back pond. We saw large animal prints associated with human footprints and then found what we were looking for: a track line with no human companion track. It ran around the edge of the little pond so Maggie and I began to backtrack. The tracks had been made hours earlier and had filled in a little with blowing snow making identification difficult.

Maggie has an adaptation that makes her reach down and grab snow when she wants a drink. Whatever animal we were tracking on its nightly rounds preferred not to do that. It's tracks went to the edge of the pond and then over the edge where you could almost see it balanced precariously carefully taking a drink. The mysterious tracks led over to the bluebird nest box just where the trail leads into the beech hemlock woods.

We were beginning to have trouble. I had brought my snowshoes with me but had chosen not to use them in the shallow snow. Unfortunately even shallow snow can drift. While this was no problem for me, my canine companion was struggling to make a path through the 6 inch drifts. I was reluctant to give up the trail so Maggie was given a ride. Sadly she missed the next piece of evidence. For months we have had to stop at the bluebird nest pole while Maggie sniffed around. Clearly it was a canine signpost. Yesterday in the snow there was a small patch of dark yellow on the track line at the nestbox. The pole was a wild canid signpost. From the positioning of the spot, the animal was a female. Maggie's track line was only a little smaller than the wild one so the mystery was fairly solved: we were tracking a female fox on her nightly rounds. This was confirmed when we finally found some clear tracks on the up slope away from the human trail.

Maggie and I had found the middle of a hunting circle. If we continued to backtrack we might find where the fox denned during the early part of the storm. The yellow spot told me that this was the home territory for this fox so it was possible the den might be her permanent home. Respecting her privacy and hoping she'll be raising a family soon, Maggie and I cut back to the road. On the bare ground again, Maggie got back to doing the same thing as the fox-marking her territory as she followed her daily route.

One Cheer for the Fiscal Cliff and Other Stuff

Good news: we may be going over the fiscal cliff. While I believe you could pick 535 Americans at random and solve this problem in about half an hour, the idiots in Washington have apparently set off a rush to the Registry of Deeds which in turn will help pump up the state contribution to the CPA fund. Unfortunately, this is not going to help this year. CPA funds remain limited, but requests continue to grow. If you have a request, they are due by this coming Thursday (the date was extended) with preliminary applications available on line.

Working on the fiscal cliff with an ultraconservative friend yesterday, we readily agreed to eliminate the Bush tax cut for millionaire's and close tax loopholes that would most heavily effect those earning above $250,000. Defense cuts would be more limited than the Democrats have proposed and entitlements like Social Security and Medicare would be tweaked mostly by raising the age for full benefits. This would help keep them solvent while contributing to deficit reduction. Fuller details remained when the talk turned to gun control. Here we both agreed there is no constitutional reason for assault weapons or automatic handguns, but the discussion fell afoul of handguns for self protection. Since I've been reading a lot about the genesis of the 2nd Amendment, I had to agree that self-defense is a protected right (with all the limits of other rights). On the other hand I'm not sure the founders felt handguns were needed for a well regulated militia. The irony is that while I have been trained to shoot a pistol and actually won prizes for target shooting, I would never have a loaded gun in the house for self-defense. My friend who has never owned or fired a gun and is among the most mild-mannered people I have ever met wants the right to own one despite risks to self, spouse, and assorted grandchildren. Don't be surprised if changes to gun laws are not forthcoming.

It's been fun watching the work at the shovel shops over the last few months. They have been racing to get exterior work done before winter so it will be interesting to see what happens after today's first snow storm. Speaking of which, this is my first chance to try out my NOAA snow forecasting app. Our national weather service is working hard to improve snow forecasting. Snow doesn't show up on weather radar the way rain does making forecasting difficult. NOAA has developed a weather model for snow. It says that at 7 am this morning the leading edge of light snow will reach southwestern New York. Snow for us should start around noon time since the whole state is covered in light snow by 1 pm. Moderate snow will be switching to heavy snow here after 7 pm. The heaviest snow of the storm will fall on Easton and surrounding towns. The height of the storm will be around 1 am although light snow will still be falling at 7 am. The Pats will have to squish the fish on their own since the weather should be clear by game time tomorrow. Let's see if the new model actually works!

A Christmas Wish

When I was little, setting up the Christmas manger was even more fun than setting up the tree. I was not a big fan of the people except for the Three Wish Men because they brought the camels! It was all the animals that surrounded the little stable that I enjoyed so much. An ox and cow, sheep, a horse, chickens, a duck and a goose all joined the camels around Baby Jesus. Legend has it that the faithful animals were given the power of speech for one hour at midnight on Christmas morning. What did they say about us this year?

Did they talk about how poorly we are doing in protecting the planet we all share? Did they talk about the millions of pets who are abandoned each year, or those factory farm animals that live their lives in terrible conditions? Hopefully, the birds spoke up for the folks that provide feeders and nest boxes and the shelter animals for the people who care for and support them. Perhaps Easton's animals talked about all the land we have chosen to share with them including the beautiful Governor Ames Estate that have bird's nests, fox runs, and chipmunk holes instead of McMansions.

In these terrible days of planet degradation, animals need a voice for more than an hour a year and only we can be that voice. My Christmas wish is that many of us put aside our human desires and speak for our animal friends. Feed the birds and don't begrudge the squirrels. Talk about the wildlife you see on daily walks. Support national and regional environmental groups like the Trustees of Reservations, and groups that provide quality animal care like the Blue Dog Shelter, the Animal Protection Center in Brockton, or Winslow Farm in Norton. Politically, we should speak up constantly that something must be done about climate change. Here in Easton we can speak out in the new master plan creation process to remind our development minded friends that we share the land with animals and plants that have a right to flourish as well. Merry Christmas!

Irish Workers Part II

My first blog on early shovel workers was a snapshot of people who were shovel workers in the U. S. census of 1850. I used other census and tax records that reached back to 1840 and swept forward to 1870, and I also looked at death and burial records that stretched into the beginning of the 20^th century. Today, we will be looking at the state census of 1855 for people who became shovel workers from 1851 to 1855. We need to remember that we are pulling this group out from those of the earlier group who were still working at the shovel shop. These new workers saw the building of the shovel shops we know today, and many were probably hired to fill the increased capacity of those new shops.

Prejudice was also growing in Easton. It’s a mistake to think that all the Irish immigrants to Massachusetts poured in at the height of the potato famine in the mid-1840s. Immigration from Ireland continued strong for decades. In the 1850s a political party, the American Party, sprang up to fight the growing influence of Irish and German immigrants. This party’s membership was supposed to be secret, and members when asked a question about membership were supposed to respond with “I Know Nothing.” The Sergeant Schultz response gave the party the nickname it is best known by today “The Know Nothing Party.” I would be factually inaccurate not to note that most Massachusetts “Know-Nothings” ultimately joined the Republican Party (both parties were anti-slavery) as did a majority of the German immigrants in the Mid-West! The Republicans bought bigger tents in those early days.

There were 131 new men listed in the census of 1855 as shovel makers including three “engineers” who ran the brand new steam engines at the rebuilt shovel factory. Thirty-three men were born in New England and six men came from Scotland. Ninety-two men came from Ireland. OK, 91 men said they were born in the Emerald Isle and a man named Gallagher claimed he was Dutch, but I’m just not going to believe it. While all these men were new to the shovel business, there were many who had come of age in Easton in families where a father or older brother was already a shovel maker.

In 1855 the shovel shop was becoming decidedly more Irish. In 1850 only 54% of the workers were Irish, but among the new workers in 1855 70% were Irish. This new group was a much less stable work force as well. In the 1855 group only one in four of the Irish workers were still on the job in 1860. This is a dramatic change from the earlier Irish immigrants of which 41% were still on the job five years later.

Something was either pushing or pulling Irish workers out of the shovel shops. Taking a closer look we find that in 1850 three of every five Irish shovel workers were unmarried exactly the opposite of the American born workers. These unmarried Irishmen were the most transient members of the shovel shop’s work force. Even back in 1850 three quarters of the single Irish were not at the shovel shop five years later. These numbers did not change dramatically among the new men of 1855. With them 80% would be gone by 1860.

Although fewer married Irishmen worked at the shovel factory in 1850, they were much more likely to stay there for five years. In fact, almost 60% of the married Irish remained for five years a much better rate of stability than the less than half of the married native-born Americans who stayed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that older American born workers, the ones most likely to be married, may have left for opportunities in other local businesses or to start local businesses of their own.

Persistence rates for unmarried American-born workers remained about the same in 1850 and 1855 with around 40% lasting at least five years. This higher rate compared to the single Irish can probably be explained by hometown family connections. The present generation was not the first to have an unmarried son living in a basement or attic!

In 1855 once again 61% of the Irish were unmarried. As we have seen, these unmarried men were slightly less likely to remain here than their counterparts in 1850. More surprising we discover that less than 40% of the married Irish remained for at least five years compared to the nearly 60% in the 1850 group. This is a remarkable difference.

In summary, nothing much changed for the single shovel worker. An American born single man was not quite twice as likely to stay for five years as an Irishman just about the same as in 1850. Family connections and a greater availability of Protestant brides (“mixed” marriages were rare) probably account for this difference. In a growing economy, unattached men could move where they thought the financial opportunity was best. However, given the relatively good pay at the shovel shops it is doubtful that money alone accounts for the difficulty the Ames family had in holding onto their single Irish workers. Our exciting downtown was about as stimulating in 1855 as it is today, but imagine not having a car to visit someplace else! Add Yankee prejudice, and the turnover rate is not that surprising.

On the other hand something made working at the shovel shop much less attractive for married Irish men and much more attractive for married Americans in 1855. Good wages, a decent school system, an equitable company store, and available rental housing would seem to have been very attractive to a family coming from poverty in Ireland. The shovel shop was indeed an “American Dream Factory” for the Irish families that were here in 1850.

By 1855 changes in working conditions related to the new factory may have reduced the attractiveness of shovel work, but the other difference between 1850 and 1855 is the presence of an organized anti-immigrant party. This may have provided a less than welcoming atmosphere in North Easton Village. Oliver Ames II and his brother Oakes favored the employment of the Irish. There are several anecdotes of warm relations between Oakes and individual Irishmen. On the other hand Old Oliver Ames, now officially retired from the shovel company, was a leading Know Nothing. We don’t know how Yankee shovel workers, overseers, or local shop keepers reacted to the Irish, but we can assume from human nature that many joined the “hot” new political party while others kept silent in the face of prejudice. Dr. Caleb Swan, a friend of the younger Ames men, was an exception and a thorn in the side of the Know Nothings.

How likely were the new men in the 1855 census who continued to work at the shovel shops for at least five years to achieve homeownership? Interestingly, as fewer Irish families chose to remain at the shovel shops, more married Americans did so. However, among those Americans of 1855 only 39% eventually owned a home here compared to 64% of those Americans from the 1850 census. It seems as the shovel shops became more Irish, it became less likely that an American would buy a home in Easton. Opportunity elsewhere or prejudice? As always more research needs to be done.

Remember the vast majority of Irishmen left the shovel shops and most moved away from Easton, but for Irish immigrants who stayed at least five years there was no difference between homeownership in the 1850 and 1855 groups. About one third of the men in each group eventually owned a house here. Many more continued to rent housing. Among the 27 Irish who were in the 1850 census and continued at the shovel company at least five years two-thirds lived the remainder of their life here. For the persistent members of the class of 1855 nearly 80% eventually died in town. By 1855 the Irish had strong roots in Easton that eventually wore away the prejudice although it would take many more decades to fully end.

A Return to Blogs after a Tragic Week

This is the twelfth time I have started a blog since the terrible events in Connecticut last Friday. Anything I could say about Easton and its history seems so trivial while anything I could contribute to the new national debate has already been said a thousand times. Let me say three things. First, since Columbine the Easton Public Schools have worked hard to make sure our schools are safe. This includes many of the safety methods you have been reading about, but also a heightened effort to make sure that our students know that somebody on our staff cares about them and can help them. At the high school where I work these efforts may be the most important thing that Principal Wes Paul has done in his time in Easton. We should all know, however, that no measure guarantees absolute safety in our gun crazed society these days.

The reason is too many guns. My second point is that although we will probably never know what the Founding Fathers really meant when they wrote the Second Amendment, I find it hard to believe they could have conceived of anything as deadly as the assault weapon used at Newtown. Let’s ban those weapons and the large clip magazines that make them so deadly.

Finally, I think me should make automatic handguns and all concealed handguns illegal. Given the prevalence of handguns in our society, this will take much more thinking than simply banning assault weapons or semiautomatic rifles that can easily be made automatic. The evidence is clear, however, that you are much more likely to get shot if you own a handgun for self-protection than if you don’t own one. People who are responsible hunters and target shooters need to band together with non-gun owners to form an interest group stronger than the radicals in the NRA.

OK, enough said and not enough. Tomorrow we return to looking at what was happening to the shovel workers in the 1850s.

A Quick Look at the Shovel Worker of 1850 and the American Dream

When did the American Dream of home ownership actually became the American Dream? City planners today seem to be pushing the idea that this is some aberrant impulse that struck our country after World War II. The evidence in Easton seems to suggest otherwise with entrepreneurs creating subdivisions as early as the 1890s. I recently set out to discover if the typical shovel worker of the mid-nineteenth century could achieve home ownership.

Almost immediately complications arose. There were hundreds of shovel workers throughout the century-too many to examine every one. That led me to the 1850 U. S. census, the first one to list all household members and occupations. I thought it would provide a simple snapshot of one set of shovel makers. It quickly became apparent that the complications  weren’t over.  In North Easton there were people listed as shovel workers and people listed as laborers, lots of laborers. Checking other data like the 1855 state census it was clear that many, perhaps almost all laborers in North Easton worked for the shovel company. Inevitably, some farm laborer or day laborer would sneak into my calculations unless I undertook a time consuming search of the shovel company archives. A further complication was that all the census takers and tax collectors of the era were Yankees who couldn’t spell an Irish name the same way twice to save their lives! Was Patric Conlin the same person as Patrick Conlan? You would think Patric age 20 in 1850 would be Patrick age 25 in 1855. You’d think that until you actually looked at the records and discovered that Paddy, a young man displaced by famine, may only have had the roughest idea of when he was born! So lets say until I get a chance to look at those payroll records we are looking at “shovel workers” which are not exactly the same thing as real shovel workers. In other words add an “ish” to any hard numbers you read below.

In 1850 I identified 123 shovel workers. Three were English immigrants, 66 were Irish immigrants and the remaining 54 were born in New England. Once the workers were identified I developed some research questions: Who had been a family head in Easton a decade earlier in 1840? Of the “class” of 1850 who remained in Easton for five years? For ten years? Who stayed in Easton until they died? And how many ever achieved home ownership?

There was a clear difference between the Americans and the Irish immigrants. In 1850 only ten of the 54 Americans were listed as laborers instead of shovel workers while 30 of 66 Irish immigrants were laborers. Many of the Americans were clearly remnants of the original work force that Old Oliver Ames drew from his Easton neighbors. Ten of the 54 were already head of a household in 1840. Only two Irishmen can be identified in the 1840 census as a household head and a shovel company employee in 1850. Thirty of the Americans stayed in Easton until they died compared to only 19 of the Irish.

There was apparently a high turnover in shovel company employees. Of the 54 Americans only 25  (46%) were still working at the Ames Company five years later and only 20 (37%) remained a decade later. Among the Irish, 27 (41%) remained five years and 19 (29%) lasted the entire decade. In our mound of numbers today, the turnover rates between the Americans and the Irish are the most similar. The ongoing Industrial Revolution provided many opportunities for workers and they clearly took advantage of them. It would be interesting to know how many men who started the decade at the shovel works moved on to different factory work and how many became small time entrepreneurs in their own right.

Only one Irishman owned his own home in 1850 compared to ten Americans. This is perhaps a reflection of a number of older American workers in the study group who we would consider to be “townies.” A researcher could look at the amount of property owned in 1860 and make an educated guess as to whether it was a house or simply land, but I chose to look at tax records for 1861 and 1870. Remember we are now looking at shovel workers in 1850 who owned houses in 1861 and/or 1870 not necessarily shovel workers in 1861 or 1870 who owned houses. The homeowners were those men who “made it” in Easton whether they remained in the shovel works or not.

Of the original 54 Americans in the study, 14 (26%) owned a home here in 1870 down from 16 in 1861. Among the original 66 Irishmen only nine (14%) had become homeowners by 1870 up from seven in 1861. Not a terribly high percentage for either group, but let’s look more closely.

How many of our class of 1850 who were still here in 1860 achieved homeownership? These are the people one would assume were putting down roots here. Among Americans nine (64%) of the 14 Massachusetts born workers had achieved homeownership by 1860. Most of these homeowners had “Easton” names like Andrews, Packard, Willis, and Randall. John Bisbee had been working in the shovel shops since the War of 1812 and Lucius Seaver became enough of an Easton institution to get a street named after him. These homeowners were already townies.

Interestingly, the story is different when we look at the out-of-staters. None of the seven workers from Maine and New Hampshire had achieved homeownership by 1861 (two would by 1870). This is even a poorer record than that of the Irish immigrants. Conceivably, this group made their money and then went home to their native states.

Among the immigrants, all three Englishmen came to Easton to stay. They all eventually died in town. One had achieved homeownership by 1861 and a second did so by 1870. The third Englishman, John Reed, died in 1869. Among the nineteen Irish who stayed a decade five (26%) had bought a house by 1861. Three more had bought homes by 1870. Thus, within 20 years 42% of the Irish who “toughed it out” at the shovel works had become homeowners. Whether they bought a home or not, these men became Eastoners; fifteen of the nineteen died in town. Further study is needed in later censuses and valuations to see if others became homeowners in later years.

The employees who were here in 1850 worked at the original shop on the Island. In fact, it was a member of our study group, Patrick Quinn, who was probably responsible for the fire that led to the construction of the shovel plant we now know. Did the new workers in the 1855 census have a different experience from the older workers? The study of this group is a little more complicated than the original 1850 workers, but I’ll try to present some information in the coming days.

What can we conclude about the class of 1850? First, the distinction made between laborers and shovel men especially when so many of the laborers of 1850 became shovel workers in the 1855 state census seems to indicate a pattern of discrimination against the Irish. Evidence from the Ames family and political history have made it clear this prejudice existed and our data further supports this view. Whether this was discrimination on the part of the census taker or the company, awaits further research.

Second, persistence at shovel making among both Americans and immigrants was not particularly high. The relatively small differences between the groups can easily be explained by the higher percentage of Americans with long standing ties to the community. These roots also explain the high percentage of homeownership among the Massachusetts born workers who stayed at the shovel works throughout the decade of the 1850s. Other Americans persisted at shovel making, but did not put down roots.

Finally, 79% of the nineteen Irish who worked at the shovel company during the decade beginning in 1850 remained to die in Easton. Only 42% achieved homeownership in their first twenty years in town. For the Irish was the shovel company an “American Dream Factory?” Would more of this persistent group have become homeowners by 1880 or 1890? Or was this generation of Irish founding fathers content to put down roots here without desiring to or being able to afford a home of their own? My guess, always pending further research, is that this generation through hard work achieved whatever dream of life in America they had back in the old country. In one way or another, the Ames shovel company enabled the achievement of the American Dream.

GIS and History

When I was a kid, I ruined my baseball card collection by writing in additional years of statistics on their back. As an occasionally serious historian, my real love has been data driven research rather than traditional historical story-telling. You'll be hearing more of this in future blogs as we look at data about whether early Irish immigrants were achieving the "American Dream" of home ownership.

I'm also working on a project that should show whether the start of the North Easton Village District Water Department reduced the number of deaths from intestinal diseases. This research has a long history starting with a man named John Snow. Snow mapped deaths from a cholera outbreak in London in 1854 and traced the disease back to a contaminated water pump.

Today we would use a computer assisted system called GIS to create such a map. GIS stands for Geographic Information System. It allows experts to create data layers that can be overlain on street maps or photos. You can actually use GIS yourself by going to the new MassGIS website. It's a little daunting and sometimes frustrating, but it can do some amazing things. I used to use it often to map information for the NRT (not that anyone ever used it).  Now I say "we would use GIS" although while I use GIS information all the time, I have to have the data entered by an expert. Luckily, Easton has such an expert in Adrienne Edwards of the DPW. Unfortunately, use of GIS and other mapping has become so important in planning that Ms Edwards is no longer available for historical projects. Tim Harrigan from the Planning Department is working hard to get up to speed with GIS and has recently updated Adrienne's data layer on historic homes in North Easton.

Building on GIS data and new historical surveys funded by Town Meeting and state funds, I've created a photoshop map that shows the pattern of development and land use in 19th century North Easton. While North Easton was not a designed community like Pullman, Illinois, its organic growth was not random. Seeing the pattern of development raised the question about the Irish workers mentioned in the first paragraph. The "real world" application of this data, of course, is providing information that can be used to convince developers to save historic properties rather than tear things down.

What sparked today's praise for GIS is an interesting article from the most recent Smithsonian. It tells the story of a geographical historian who uses GIS data to explore the battle of Gettysburg. The results are very significant and worth a read.

A Great Day in Easton

Saturday, December 1-Up and out by 7 to help Historical Society Curator with the Garden Club Green Sale at the old railroad station. Helping consisted mostly of staying out of the way of the Garden Club members and waiting for the chance to buy some Christmas wreaths. This show has been going on for years, and its hard to beat this example of "enlightened self-interest." Club members cut their greens just days before the sale guaranteeing a long lasting wreath at the best price around. That's the self-interest part, the enlightened part is supporting the Garden Club which is one the most active and effective community organizations around. Most of the money we donate goes back to beautifying the town. The Green Sale is over but you can help out the Garden Club by visiting the Festival of Trees at Queset House this week. This is the second annual event with more than fifty decorated trees on display and available for you to buy a chance on. The Festival of Trees is open from noon until 8 today as part of the Lions Holiday Festival and from 4-8 pm during the week before extended hours next Saturday.

Aristotle recognized three kinds of friendship. His most interesting category was "friendship of utility." This was the friendship that is based on a mutual business interest-like that between a shopkeeper and his "regulars." In our Walmart society it's hard to get people to understand this kind of friendship-who gets to build a relationship with a salesperson these days? Well, you can find out at the indoor Farmers Market at Simpson Springs every Saturday from 10-2 where a real community is building between shoppers and sales people. Frankly, I'm doing most of my food shopping at the market where I can buy from people I know I can trust to give me great quality fish, meat, cheese, vegetables, eggs, pickles, chocolate, coffee, and baked goods. Farmer's Market is becoming a misnomer as the market adds cosmetics, jewelers, painted scarfs, and chocolate to go along with the best food around. Yesterday Selectman Colleen Corona turned photographer and shot a lot of pictures that will be on the town's Facebook page. That's the Facebook page that brought me back to social media--an definitely worth a look.

Hopefully, uploading photos kept Ms. Corona occupied long enough for me to beat her to Easton's newest restaurant. This is an ongoing competition that usually involves me walking into a new spot in the area to find the Corona family sitting at a table. Not Just Thaboule opened yesterday in the Center Street location formerly occupied by the late lamented Soups on Center. The new food spot is the idea of the owners of The Pub in Brockton which has been serving Lebanese food for thirty years. The Easton menu mixes Lebanese specialties with typically American sandwiches like grilled cheese, tuna melt, and turkey at reasonable prices. I stopped by last night and went with two Middle Eastern dishes. The first was stuffed grape leaves, something I don't usually like. It's too easy to get overly lemony or sour tasting grape leaves stuffed with rice and very little meat. I figured this would be a good test of the new restaurant. I ordered an appetizer size portion-6 leaves for $6.95 and they heated they up for me to take home. They were amazing-lots of flavorful ground beef mixed in with the rice in fresh tasting and tender leaves. Each stuffed roll was about twice as big as normally seen in things like the Mazza Plate in other Easton restaurants. Four made a filling supper for me and I finished the other two, heated in the microwave, for breakfast this morning. I also bought a pint of Baba Ganooze to take home. I first tasted this smoked eggplant dip at The Pub thirty years ago and wondered if it still tasted as good. In recent years I've been getting my fix from Athena International Foods just down the street from Gerry's Farm in Brockton, but I find their Baba to be overly smoky. Not Just Taboule does it right-a delicious healthy spread or dip for parties or a wonderful change for a quick sandwich-the taste has just the right amount of smoke to liven the taste and surprisingly it is not overly pureed to a mush like consistency. We all know the track record for restaurants in this spot-parking for this strictly take out place is sometimes a hassle (hint-park on the side), but if the whole menu is as good as what I tasted it should be worth a momentary delay in getting back on Center Street. Give it a try-Eastoners can't lament the lack of restaurants in town and then not support the ones we have!

Back to the Historical Society today for more sales of our new Christmas ornament that celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Town Offices with a full color ornament of Wayside. Over the years I have done a lot for the Historical Society-tours, writing, etc.. Chances are, though, I'll be remembered as the guy that donated the antenna that allows our big screen TV to play the Patriot's games. Yup, you can visit our museum, Christmas shop, and not miss a single play of the game. It sure beats a DVD of a burning Yule log!

One More Bird Post

Expert birder also noted that there were a lot of Red-breasted Nuthatches around this year. Easton potentially has two nuthatches. Anyone who has a bird feeder has seen a White-breasted Nuthatch.

The name nuthatch comes from their habit of storing nuts and big bugs under bark or in tree cavities for winter food. At a feeder the White-breasted Nuthatch will zoom in, grab a seed, and zoom off unlike chickadees or titmice that often stay and crack the seed on the feeder. The long beak and big head of this sparrow-sized bird allows it to look for bugs under tree bark. It's interesting how birds divide up a tree's bugs. Woodpeckers drill into a tree, Brown Creepers crawl up a tree and nuthatches crawl down a tree upside down. Mainiacs call the Nuthatches "ass up a tree" birds. Easton probably has a full load of White-breasted Nuthatches with each patch of fairly mature deciduous woods with its own pair who seem to mate for life. I'm still studying mixed flocks of birds and the White-breasted Nuthatch often joins up with chickadees and titmice. It seems though that when the mixed flock moves out of the nuthatch's territory, the nuthatch stays behind waiting for the next group to arrive. Thus, you'll always see more chickadees and titmice at your feeder with just two nuthatches unless two territories overlap.

White-breasted Nuthatches are pretty common throughout the US wherever there are deciduous trees. The Red-breasted Nuthatch prefers coniferous forests and Massachusetts is at the southern edge of its range. Global warming is moving ranges of birds like this further north so there are probably fewer resident Red-breasted Nuthatches here than a hundred years ago. Birds from further north migrate to our balmy climes so the best time to see them is winter when they are also somewhat less selective about what tree they sit on. I recently saw my first Red-breasted at the Governor Ames Estate on a maple tree although I'm sure it was the large pines, spruces, and hemlocks that first attracted him there.

These birds are smaller than their white-breasted counterparts, smaller than a sparrow. They have the same ass up a tree gleaning style although their beaks are proportionally smaller. It's an active little bird that never seems to sit still. Not a great singer it seems even more limited to a tinny version of the nuthatch "Yank" call. Both nuthatches nest in tree cavities. The White-breasted smears ants and other insects with chemical defenses around the outside of the cavity in an oak, beech, or maple to deter squirrels. The Red-breasted smears pitch around their cavity nest for the same purpose.

Despite their tiny size nuthatches really get around. The White-breasted is genetically similar to a related species in the Himalayas. The tiny Red-breasted is almost identical to the Corsican nuthatch.
Some European historian should explain to the other birds just how much damage tiny Corsicans can do.

Bird News

Kevin Ryan of Bay Road is without doubt the best birder in Easton. He has traveled the world on birding vacations so when he gives you a hint of what is around town you pay attention. He suggested at the beginning of November that I should watch the goldfinches and house finches at my feeder for the appearance of Pine Siskins. This has proven to  be a little more tricky than I had hoped. Here is a Pine Siskin.

OK, except for the hard to see yellow stripe on the wing, this would be what birders call an LBJ-little brown job-a category that includes lots of sparrows and other birds. The good news is the only sparrows visiting my feeders right now are easily identifiable House Sparrows. Unfortunately from an ID perspective I also have House Finches. Here's a lady house finch.

I hate to say this to a lady, but the easiest way to distinguish the two birds is that the finch has a big schnozz. Also, the lady finch in comparison is a plus size averaging an inch bigger and almost a quarter of an ounce heavier (a big deal in the bird world), but relative size is hard to determine in the field unless the two birds are sitting next to each other. The Siskin has a more more V-shaped tail while the Finch has a squarer one, but I've been doing a lot of feeder watching looking for that skinny beak. There are an estimated 22 million Pine Siskins in Canada, the USA, and Mexico so my day is coming!

The beaks of these finches reminds me of my favorite nature book 1994's The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner which traces examples of evolution in action. The title comes from a multiple decade experiment on one of the smaller Galapagos Islands. The finches in the Galapagos were one of the key finds that led Darwin to his great theory. This particular island switches between desert and lush vegetation with the changes in El Niño. A couple of scientists have been capturing, measuring, and banding all the finches on the island for many, many years. As the vegetation changes with the climate birds with bigger or smaller beaks are favored. If the island ever became permanently dry or permanently wet one beak size would become extinct and a new species would have evolved. That's also the story of the finch and the siskin who came from the same family and share a common ancestor. Both birds can eat small seeds like nyger (we generally call it thistle seed), but the House Finch can also chow down on bigger seeds like sunflower that would give the Pine Siskin some trouble.

Once again I have a problem since the seed mix I use in my general feeder includes unshelled sunflower as well as the shelled variety. It's a basic principle of ecology that everyone would rather eat potato chips on the couch instead of driving to a restaurant to eat lettuce. In other words all animals try to achieve the highest food value they can with the least effort. This means most birds regardless of beaks will eventually figure out they can get more calories, more easily by eating big chunks of unshelled sunflower rather than tediously shelling tiny nyger seeds. Not all birds, I watched a traditionalist Goldfinch spend fifeteen minutes shelling nyger yesterday while his buddies ate the sunflower.

Well time for lunch. Tomorrow a more successful outcome from one of Mr. Ryan's tips. Do you know your nuthatches?

A History Mystery and Destination Shopping

Blog time this week has been devoted to some background historical research. The Historical Society is putting together a new collection of self-guided walking tours for the area around the old railroad station. One of the tours deals with the workers at the shovel company and is tentatively called "The American Dream Factory Tour." The underlying idea is that the shovel shop provided the jobs that allowed the workers to live the American Dream. That concept comes from anecdotal evidence found in the survey forms of North Easton houses done by the Historical Commission, but what if that is skewed by looking at the history of houses instead of people?

Rather than create a database of the 500 or so workers here in the 1880s and 1890s, I decided to track the workers who were listed in the 1850 census. Instead of dozens of Andersons and Johnsons, I'm looking at the Yankees who helped Old Oliver start the company and the new influx of Irish immigrants who were a trial to native census takers-Ahearn becomes Ahan and Patrick O'Hara becomes Patric O. Hara. The questions to be answered are: Did the workers in the 1850 and 1855 censuses stay in Easton? Did the immigrants become citizens here? Did they start families? And finally were they able to buy houses here? While you are fighting through the crowds on Black Friday, I'll be finishing phase one of the study.

About that Black Friday thing. Why not skip the whole thing and visit the new indoor Farmers Market at Simpson Springs?  The market continues to grow and this week several new vendors will bring chowder and jewelry to the eclectic mix. I'm a regular at the market buying the fabulous fish from Jordan's Fish Market and my weekly loaf from Bridgewater Bakery, but I've also picked up Christmas presents from Running Brook Winery and Omega Olive Oil and Vinegar. Last week I added a wonderful made-to-order bouquet of flowers. This transaction was the soul of local markets. I set my price, picked the main flowers, and then the shop keeper designed a beautiful bouquet. She'll even fill up a vase or container that you bring from home. The surprise of my bouquet, which is still going strong next to me as I write, is an ornamental kale flower that looks like a big white rose. Then there is cheese, chocolate, honey products, pickles, preserves, spices and cosmetics. Skip the Dunkin's and buy some fresh roasted coffee and home baked scones while you shop! See you at the market from 10-2 on Saturdays. Oh, and don't miss the new flavored club sodas from Simpson Springs: Lemon-lime, pink grapefruit, and cranberry.

Collations

The Easton Historical Society dedicated a flagpole in honor of long time member Ken Martin on Saturday. Ken was a veteran of the SeaBees who served in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. He brought his skills home to have a long career with the tree department. Ken helped out the Historical Society in a variety of ways in particular with a biannual bottle drive that raised over $10,000 for the Society. Ken is definitely missed.

 

After the ceremony the program said we would have a collation. “What’s a collation?” the person sitting next to me asked. Having been through two wars-the Revolution and the Civil as a living history reenactor  I knew it meant refreshments, but I had no idea where the word came from. Turns out we can thank a saint.

The story starts with John Cassian who lived from about 360-435 A. D..  This was so long ago that no one knows whether he came from present day Bulgaria, Romania, or France. Cassian was very devout and like lots of men of his age he went to the desert to better talk to God. As a young man he spent time hermiting around Bethleham, but finding it too crowded, he headed for the desert near Scete in Egypt. Unfortunately, other religious folks beat him to it, and Cassian spent about 15 years moving among the small groups of hermits that were coalescing into the first monasteries. Eventually he wrote a book called Conferences with the Hermits of Scete.

At any rate, poor Cassian lived in a time when there seemed to be a new heresy every day. His choice was Semipelagianism, but that need not detain us here because Cassian avoided burning at the stake because his position didn’t become officially heretical until a hundred years after his death. However, Cassian left the desert to avoid getting caught up in a completely different heresy. Arriving in Constantinople he got a job with the Patriarch of Constantinople who hadn’t yet broken with the Pope in Rome to found the Greek Orthodox Church. The Big P had broken with the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, however and sent Cassian to Rome to ask the Pope for help.

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While in Rome Cassian told the Pope about how all those Egyptian hermits were banding together into monasteries. What the Pope did about the Patriarch I have no idea, but he asked Cassian to start a monastery, one of the first in Europe, in the city of Marseilles. This Cassian did about 415. He spent the last twenty years of his life there and his Conferences and another book called the Institutions became the rule book for early monastic life.

All this effort got Cassian official sainthood in the Eastern Orthodox Church with the bummer Saint’s Day of February 29^th. In the West he was never officially canonized, but drew a better Saint’s Day, July 23. You can visit his head and right hand at the church of St. Victor in Marseilles, the descendent church of his original monastery.

So when do we eat? Or at least what has this got to do with collations?  Well, about 50 years after Cassian’s death, St Benedict came along. Benedict picked up on Cassian’s  monastery idea and founded the Benedictine order. He wrote the Rules of St. Benedict that still govern his order, the Cisterians, and the Trappists.

Benedict decreed that on fast days his monks could eat two small meals (Robin Hood’s Friar Tuck was a Benedictine and over the centuries the definition of “small” changed). Cassian fanboy that he was, Benedict also decreed that a reading from Cassian’s Conferences should precede the light meals. The Latin title of the Conferences is Collationes partum in secetica eremo, hence the word collation. Believe it or not it is also the origin of the Polish word for supper-kolacja. “And now you know the rest of the story.”

Go and See the King

There is a Belted Kingfisher visiting the Governor Ames Estate. Kingfishers are in decline across their range, but they are by no means rare. I usually see one or two a year (compare that to 10 zillion English sparrows). Casual walkers have been mistaking the King for a Blue Jay, but the King's blue is bluer and his enormous beak and noisy chatter is distinctive. I'm saying he because the bird looks like the fellow above. Girl Belted Kingfishers have two belts across their chest, one a thin red one, the other blue.

Pete Dunne in his Essential Field Guide Companion calls the Kingfisher the Aqua Kestrel because this bird flies over ponds or hovers 20 or 30 feet over water before diving headfirst like a Kestrel into the water to catch little fish.

I've seen the bird at the new Trustees of Reservation's property for about two weeks, but I've yet to see him make a dive. He's been fishing both Shovel Shop Pond and the little pond on the opposite side of the mansion. Both ponds are loaded with little fish so I'm a little concerned we might be hosting a juvenile who doesn't know the ropes.

If he is a juvenile, he has had an interesting life already. His parents had mated for life and had worked for up to two weeks to dig a tunnel into a riverbank.  Most Kingfisher tunnels go up inside the bank. If a flood occurs the chicks have a chance to survive in the air pocket in the upward part of the tunnel. After Mom lays her eggs in the tunnel, the pair take turns incubating them. Dad gets the day shift while Mom gets to keep the eggs warm and sleep at night. This lovely scene of domesticity does not extend to housekeeping; Kingfishers don't clean their nests like many other birds. Things get worse when the babies hatch because they are fed regurgitated partly digested fish. Leftovers are not refrigerated so the tunnel must get really smelly. Not a problem for the birds who have a very poor sense of smell. Once the fledglings emerge from the tunnel they go to fishing school. Mom and Dad drop dead fish on the water until Junior gets the idea of diving for dinner.

The Kingfisher at Ames is making a lot of noise that sounds nothing like a Blue Jay. It has been described as a "scratchy chattering rattle." Kingfishers can become pretty tame around people often fishing in golf course ponds, but they are very territorial. Our Kingfisher is making noise when people come within a hundred feet. Because of their territoriality, Kingfishers are reluctant migraters. With global warming you might see Massachusetts birds throughout the year with winter birds defending holes in the ice.

Let me know if you see this guy make a splash!

Four More Years

Yes, not slipping over the fiscal edge in January is job one for our poor deadlocked democracy, but we can't afford four more years of yammering over health care, social issues, and economics. It's the environment, stupid! How many Super Storm Sandy's do you need before you believe we have messed up our world? The science for human induced climate change and general environmental degradation is overwhelming yet the party of angry white men and fat cats continue to obstruct change for their oil company masters while the party of everybody else panders to the self-interested needs of its multiple constituents.

This is the last four years where my selfish generation can do something to ease the burden of debt on our children and grandchildren, but it may also be the last four years where we can do something to stop catastrophic climate change. A truly progressive administration would realize that environmental issues are at the core of everything from improving public health (and cutting health care costs) to diplomacy-how can the emerging countries like China, India, and Brazil achieve lifestyles like ours without destroying the world? Answer: they can't. It would be wonderful if Mr. Obama would provide some leadership on these issues while the Republicans sort themselves out and see if they can cough up the hairball of men like Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove. Sadly, I doubt both Mr. Obama's vision and the Republican's commitment to change a losing formula.

"A plague on both your houses" Shakespeare said referring to the Capulets and Montagues, but he could just as well have been talking about the House of Representatives and the Senate. With climate change the plague is likely to be Dengue Fever.

The Market Moves Indoors

The outdoor market "officially" ended last Tuesday when no vendor showed up in the wake of the hurricane. The new indoor market opened Saturday at Simpson Springs on Route 138. If you don't know where Simpson Springs is, you probably should. It's in the running for the oldest continuously operating business in Easton, and it would have won hands down if the Indians who discovered the spring about 10,000 years ago had plastic bottles to sell the water in. The pure water from Simpson Springs is the gift of the glacier which created an underground river as it melted away. The river bottom became a snake shaped ridge of sand that the spring flows from. After thousands of years of native use, the settlers arrived and began to use the spring. The first English child in Easton was born on Simpson Springs property. For many decades the spring water was channeled through a wooden pipe and available to all. Residents who used the spring water enjoyed better health then their neighbors who relied on shallow wells built to close to privies so the water enjoyed a great reputation. Enter capitalism. Owners began to sell the water after the Civil War and in the early 1880s they began to make "tonic." Today they are the oldest bottling company still operating in America and the single source of the least expensive spring water as well. Just bring your gallon jugs and show up with quarters for the water machine. Who knows, you may be drinking from a spring that once served King Philip-or his great, great, great, etc. grandparents.

The folks who showed up with their jugs and empty tonic bottles certainly got a surprise on Saturday because the new market opened at 10. Over the next few weeks all the summer favorites will be there except for tiny Second Nature Farm that only does a CSA at their farm in winter. Langwater's two vendors, Jordan's, the area's best seafood company, and A Bread Company are also there. A great Saturday breakfast can be had with a scone from A Bread Company and a cup of coffee from the market's official coffee roasters. There are two chocolate candy people, two cheese vendors, a pickle salesman, and a vendor who sells olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Coupled with old favorites Oakdale Farms, Running Brook Wines, Lawton's farm beef, and Bridgewater Baking Company's sourdoughs, you have a supermarket where all your food needs can be had by supporting local companies. Oh, I should also mention two cosmetics companies!

Here's a first Farmer's Market recipe. Take a salmon fillet from Jordan's. Add a little ordinary olive oil or PAM in a small heavy frying pan. Heat to medium. Add salt and pepper to the fish and place it meat side down for about 4 minutes. Turn it over and increase heat a little to finish cooking. While it is cooking take two tablespoons of Omega Olive Oil's blood orange infused olive oil and mix it with a tablespoon of their Honey-Ginger Balsamic Vinegar. About a minute before you finish cooking, pour the oil and vinegar over the salmon. Plate the salmon and pour the pan sauce over it. Great salmon flavor with subtle hints of orange and ginger!

Tomorrow a recipe for Lawton Farms short ribs, Running Brook wine, and Oakdale Farms potatoes.

Now, here's my concern. I'll be buying my seafood weekly from Jordan's and bread and vegetables weekly as well, but I just bought a quart of pickles that will last me for weeks. We need customers that are regulars, but we also need an influx of new people weekly to help the specialty salesmen along. Come to the market and tell your friends! Oh, and bring a jug!

Meet Bert Munro

Just a short note today between answering robocalls about Bert Munro who has something to say to the diminished people of America today.  Bert Munro or at least the version of Bert that comes through in Anthony Hopkins brilliant portrayal in "The World's Fastest Indian" is a lovable old rascal from New Zealand.

The Hockomock Film Club viewed Munro's story last night based on a member's recommendation. I had never heard of this 2005 film, but what a film it is. When we meet Munro it is 1963 and he is a 67 year-old eccentric who lives in a shack with bits of homemade parts for his 1920 Indian motorcycle. His dream is to take his antique to the Bonneville Salt Flats and set the land speed record for his size engine. Hopkins brilliant acting takes us inside the life of an old man with young man's dreams. His health is falling apart, he's living on his pension and barely gotten by. The little boy next door still believes that he can achieve his goal, but his neighbors, who love this genuine person, have their doubts. Two scenes early in the film sum this up: we see Munro sending the little boy home to borrow his mom's carving knife so he can cut the tread off second hand tires, and we later see the Indian which really can go like a bat out of hell in a straight line lose a race with a local motorcycle gang because Munro can't take a turn during the race.

What happens next is how Bert finally makes it to America and his trip from LA to Utah. It's Don Quixote and Crocodile Dundee in an America that still valued authenticity. It's Huckleberry Finn as an old man with the highway as the Mississippi. It's an America that was still capable of reacting to a slightly daft dreamer with (mostly) kindness and gentleness. It's also hilarious as well as profound. You're kept on the edge of your seat worrying about whether poverty and heart and prostate problems will keep Munro from realizing his dream. The film ends both as you might expect and as a total surpirse. Hopkins should have won an Academy Award. He considers this his best performance, and he is well supported by the wonderful cast and the excellent cinematography. Rent this film.

Visiting Plymouth and Plimoth

Two trips to Plymouth the past week-one a scouting mission and one a trip with my cousins from the west coast. The historical sites had certainly evolved from my last historical visit twenty years ago. Most of us probably have visited with kids, but Pilgrim Hall and Plimoth Plantation both deserve a second look as adults.

The scouting trip took me to Pilgrim Hall Museum at 75 Court Street (Route 3A). I remembered the museum as a stuffy old style place loaded with poorly lighted Pilgrim exhibits. Restored a few years ago, the museum now makes good use of its collection. Upon arrival you are urged to go to the basement exhibit area and see a short 13 minute film telling a modern version of the Pilgrim story. The highlight of the museum is its collection of 17^th century artifacts connected to Pilgrim families. These objects range from ceramics to armaments to furniture and clothing. The collection began when the museum was opened in 1824 “only” 200 years after the Pilgrims arrived. The artifacts there are well lit and even better explained. Unlike most museums there are a number of replicas with instructions to please touch. You can even try out a replica of one of those spindly great chairs. For my pilgrim families there were pieces of Brewster furniture and a beaver hat worn by Constance Hopkins.

The upper floor of the museum hosted a temporary exhibit of books and documents which was not very interesting to me and a permanent collection that explores how public views of the Pilgrims have changed through the generations. This is a great way to explore the museum’s collection of paintings, but the highlight is a collection of costumes that show the changing perceptions of the Pilgrims. There’s also a chunk of Plymouth Rock-please touch! The place is open daily from 9:30-4:30 (closed January and February) and is worth the price of admission which is $8 for adults with discounts for seniors and AAA members.

I visited Plimoth Plantation with the West Coast cousins who had just discovered they had family on the Mayflower. Due to justified pressure over the years this living history museum has matured and now offers a more balanced view of the Pilgrims and their Wampanoag neighbors. We came at the right time-the last of a thousand school children had just departed as we drove in. Again your visit is expected to start with a movie. This one is called “Two Peoples, One Story.” It does a good job tracing the complex interconnection of Native and Pilgrim culture while introducing you to the layout of the outdoor museum.

We moved onto the Wampanoag village. Staffed by native Wampanoags who act as modern museum docents in order to answer contemporary as well as historical questions, the six people in the village were practicing native crafts. Two were burning out a log to create a canoe as they introduced people to the village. We then went to the nuwetu-we would call it a long house. The young woman and her daughter in the long house answered all sorts of questions from us. Her explanation of how a matrilineal society worked was fascinating. Leaving the long house with a little more knowledge we saw that the village has full sized examples of all three of the seasonal houses of the Wampanoag. Before leaving the village we discovered the cooking display and had a wonderful chat with the women there. They had roasted a turkey earlier in the day and were now making a pot of turkey soup. They explained that a pot of soup was always available for visitors or returning hunters. One woman shared that her grandmother had continued the tradition down to modern times-a good example of cultural continuity and the reason for the modern interpreters in historic clothing.

On the other hand the people in the Pilgrim Village are “stuck” in the year 1627. Their first person stories and life style is a high point of any visit. Our first encounter was with three young wives led by Priscilla Alden. They were sitting outside, the day’s work done, working on three part harmony for a hymn. The sound of their singing could be heard all around the upper village as they alternated between religious and secular songs. They really set the stage for us to step back into the 17^th century. “Who are you looking for? Nobody seems to come here unless they are looking for somebody”, one girl said. We admitted we were looking for Mister Brewster and the Hopkins family and got general directions to their homes. Before we visited with “family” we stopped at other places in the village. At the blacksmith shop we learned about nail making and the economics of trade, as sparks flew all about us. Next we visited the house of Dr. Fuller. “Me husband is no doctor, “ said his wife, “He’s a surgeon.” This led to discussion of 17^th century medicine with the wife admitting rather proudly that her husband could mix up more complex medicine than the average housewife.

Finally we arrived at the Brewster home to discover Elder William Brewster and his daughter-in-law Lucretia, both ancestors. The actor playing the role of Brewster must have a doctoral degree in the 17^th century. We were happy to learn of his progressive attitude towards education. “When I had my sons sitting at the table learning their letters, I thought it silly not to have my daughters sit there too.” He was also surprisingly tolerant of the Native American religion. Pointing out a “conversation” with Tisquantum that led him to believe the Indians were on the right track-they had a great spirit after all-despite having many other gods. We learned that the Pilgrims had discussed the issue of conversion with English experts who had suggested letting the natives decide on their own. Our conversation continued on to many other subjects from the voyage of the Mayflower compared to other ships of the time and 17^th century printing in Holland that fascinated my cousin who is a modern day printer.

Our last stop in the village was with John Billington who was whittling a spoon. Unlike the scholarly Brewster, Billington was a working man, who filled us in on many details of ordinary village life. I stopped the cousins in their tracks as we left Billington with a whispered “He’s going to be hanged for murder in three years.” That’s an important consideration for an adult visit to Plimoth, the more you know about the people, the more fun the village is. A good place to start is Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower despite its emphasis beyond the first generation of Pilgrims. For those who have Pilgrim ancestors George Willison’s Saints and Strangers, is not as well written as Philbrick’s book and somewhat dated, but it offers a lot of information on individuals in the early years.

After leaving the village we spent time in the old visitor’s center which has been converted into a workshop for creating objects for the two villages using original techniques. We watched a potter at work, a Native American working with feathers, and a carpenter who was by far the most interesting and outgoing. True to its original purpose the building also had an extensive gift shop with lots of books. You could easily spend an hour here especially if you are a home woodworker.

All in all, I believe Plimoth Plantation has really stepped up its interpretation. It’s like taking an advanced degree in Pilgrim history and it’s exactly what a living history museum should be. The Plantation is open until November 25^th and reopens in the third week of March. Hours are 9-5.

Greenspade Inn and Three Restaurants

Just got back from a day and a half of touring with my long lost cousin from the West Coast. I'm going to do a separate post on our tour of Plimoth Plantation and Plymouth, but I'd like to say some great things about an Easton hidden gem: The Greenspade Inn. Located at 66 Lincoln Street, the Greenspade is Easton's only bed and breakfast. In fact its Easton's only inn, motel, and hotel. It's also a super idea. The Greenspade is located in a house that is over a hundred and fifty years old and has the wide boards and quirky design to prove it. Two of the four rooms have separate baths and two share a bath. The ambiance makes you feel like you have stepped back in time. Guests have the use of a living room that overlooks a big back yard, but we always found our way back to the large dining room with its fireplace and large antique table and chairs. One couldn't ask for a better host than Veronica Herlihy. She made a suggestion that changed our itinerary, opening up part of a day for a tour of North Easton and had restaurant recommendations as well. She is also an amazing cook-the breakfast part of B and B is a strong suit here. She made a hearty breakfast for my cousin and diet breakfast for his wife, but the diet breakfast included home cooked egg whites, a giant fruit plate and yogurt. Even dieters don't leave the Greenspade hungry.

Rosemary was hilarious on her first trip to Massachusetts-she wanted lobster at every meal except breakfast. We started with a Lazy Man's Lobster at Legal Seafood in Braintree. I opted for a wood grilled medley of three fish, shrimp and scallops, my cousin chose steak. I'm never happy with the price at Legal, but you definitely get good fish and according to my cousin great steak. Rosemary loved the lobster.

However, for lunch yesterday we went to Woods overlooking Plymouth Harbor. This is one of those no frills shacks that dot the coast. The locals eat at Woods. It has generally high reviews although some folks have killed it for rude service (there isn't any-you order at a window and bus your own table) and bad food. I tried the place out Sunday found a smiling person in the order window and a long line for the food so I took a chance. Definitely no frills-no lobster bibs or heated damp napkins not even handiwipes, but twin one pounders (one a little larger) were $22.95. Rosemary loved the lobster after we showed her how to eat the darned things. She didn't get the little legs thing until an old gentleman at a nearby table explained the nuances. I had fried shrimp-delicious and generous at just $9.95 and Cousin Richard had the fish and chips, another hit. Great food, great prices and great view of the harbor from our formica table. Clean bathroom also-who needs handiwipes.

Home after the tour we went to Maguires where Rosemary had the Lobster Caprese, a combo of lobster salad over tomato, lettuce, and mozzarella  which finished a close second to the boiled lobster at Woods. This is the second time our local eatery beat out Legal. A taste test of fried clams had Maguires beating the famous restaurant last year. I ordered the fish tacos which uses the same top notch fish that goes into their fisherman's sandwich. Richard had the steak tips which I feel is the restaurant's least successful food-certainly never bad, but not a home run like many things on the menu. Richard found the steak very tasty, but not tender. The service was great on a busy night. Hooray for the local joint and the shack in Plymouth.

Tomorrow an assessment of the new Pilgrim story.

Three Big Events

A busy week in Easton!  On Thursday, October 25th at 7, the Trustees of Reservations will be holding a public visioning session in the old Carriage House on the Governor Ames Estate. I really like the careful planning that the Trustees seem to devote to all their properties and think that they have been doing a fine job maintaining the property, but two things concern me.

One is the final plan for the "mansion" house itself. Smaller than most MacMansions built in Easton over the last decade and only 60 years old, the house on the estate sits in the footprint of the original mansion. Unless a use can be found for this building that allows the Trustees to break even on heating and maintenance, it will eventually be taken down. I think this would be very sad as the house is the focal point of the landscapes site lines. It also provides a wonderful niche for wildlife as I learned when I parked in front of it Sunday. My car was surrounded by a mixed flock of robins, bluejays, flickers, and kinglets. Maggie and I watched the flock until they moved on after 15 minutes. OK, I watched the birds while Maggie fumed about not getting out of the car to sniff things. It was like being in a bird blind because the birds at the estate are so unconcerned with people.

My other concern is the vulnerability of the property. Sheep Pasture has 158 acres of land while the Governor Ames Estate has less than 30. At Sheep Pasture much of the property is inaccessible, a boon to wildlife, but the part that is accessible to people is a constant maintenance headache-people are pigs. Our wonderful little children also seem to have one reaction to wildlife-chase it, screaming. The acreage of the Ames Estate is manicured and completely accessible. I'm not sure that the wildlife there has a chance against the influx of people some Eastoners are proposing. Plans to make the place "alive" may be the surest way to make it dead. As generations of quiet walkers have discovered, the Ames Estate is a place where you can hear the voice of nature in the rustle of leaves, the calls of birds. It only succeeds when people have the chance to slowdown and open their senses. A playground, a coffee shop and too many events will ruin it, I believe. Come see it before it changes, but be quiet, look and listen. Also, don't miss the meeting on Thursday night. It's your chance to help determine the future of this wonderful place.

On a happier note this Saturday the Easton Farmers Market will be holding its first ever Doggie Halloween Costume Contest. Puppy Luv, one of the original Farmers Market vendors, will be providing prizes in four costume categories: cutest, funniest, most original, and scariest. All doggie entrants will get a treat. The Contest starts at 11. Maggie will be present in her lion costume-no cowboy costume would fit. She will not be competing in protest of not being awarded both the cutest and scariest costume prizes in advance.

Also on Saturday at the Bay Road Fire Station, the Agricultural Commission will be hosting an informational session and sign up for the new Community Gardens at Wheaton Farm from 10 to Noon. The new garden space has been plowed and tilled so you can see it as you drive by. The plan provides for 15 twenty foot by twenty foot family sized plots and 10 ten by twenty foot single plots. The large plots will go for $75 per season with the smaller ones at $45. The proceeds of the rentals will go towards managing and improving the garden area. The goal of the garden is to use only organic practices. A water system and 12 foot high fence will be added before the garden officially opens in mid-April, 2013.

Vampires in Easton…Sure Why Not!

I was on a Spooky Walk yesterday with a dozen fourth grade girls and their mothers. We were standing on the stage at Queset Gardens, and I was doing my best pitching the numerous rather friendly ghost sightings in North Easton when one perky fan of the Twilight series asked the inevitable question. “Were there any vampires in Easton?”

I collect Easton ghost stories and don’t believe most of them. They are a wonderful mix of folklore and poor observation and I reserve the right to change them when I tell them to young audiences. A bloody minded fifth grader once told me the story of an abusive father whose daughter pushed him off the Bridge Street bridge in front of a train one Halloween night. I’ve always found the real life part of the story unpleasant to tell to kids-yesterday a “mean man” was pushed off the bridge by an avenging “big dog.” You have to tell the story because the tagline is too good to pass up-“And you can still hear the whistle of the ghost train if you stand on the bridge on Halloween night.” And you can-every time a train pulls into Stoughton Station.

I was reluctant to just make up a vampire story on the spo, but Easton should have vampires. Sadly they wouldn’t look like the hunky or seductive actors that play vampires in movies and TV today. Why should we have vampires? We’ve had just about everything else: ghosts, the devil and his imps, witches, and in the 20^th century Bigfoot and Mothman. I can’t speak for modern times, but superstition ran rampant in 19^th century rural New England and vampires were part of that tradition. Parts of Easton were so “rural” that belief in witches and charms persisted almost to 1900.

Before Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Bela Lugosi’s film version in 1932, 18^th century European peasants believed vampires looked like this fellow:

This is the great Max Shrek from 1922’s Nosferatu, the scariest vampire movie ever, and one of the few silent films that can still be viewed with real interest today. Note the long fingernails, sunken chest, and paralyzed facial expression. Those European peasants thought that vampires were real corpses come back to suck the life from the dead.

19^th century New England saw an outbreak of similar vampire belief. Populations had reached the size where certain endemic diseases of crowding and poor sanitation became common. Here in Easton wells too close to outhouses killed many with typhoid and other intestinal diseases. The most mysterious of these diseases before the discovery of germ theory was tuberculosis also called phthisis or consumption. Spread by contaminated milk and mucous from the lungs of infected people, it was a difficult disease to diagnosis because it could attack so many parts of the body.

In many families a child would come down with the disease, waste away, die, and then a sibling would begin to show the same symptoms. It was easy for the superstition to believe that the first child had come back from the dead to draw the life out of another.

If you want to know what happened next you can read several sensationalized accounts or you can download from the internet “Bioarcheological and Biocultural Evidence for the New England Vampire Folk Belief” by Paul S. Sledzik and Nicholas Bellantoni which was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1994. The article gives the chilling story of a corpse that was mutilated after death to stop an outbreak of vampirism. It’s a good read and indicates that there were at least a dozen similar cases mostly in Rhode Island.

Some of these cases made the papers, but it seems that only the undereducated really believed in vampires while the thoroughly modern folks of the time thought it was a ridiculous superstition. It’s likely that grave digging and corpse mutilation was often carried out in secret and thus, the real extent of the vampire hysteria may never be known.

So were there vampires in Easton? All the signs are here-only the hard evidence of skull and bones is lacking. Town records show that consumption was just as much a scourge here as anywhere else. We had superstitious and uneducated people in the rural parts of town who were not bound by rational thought. For example, in 18^th century Easton a mad woman was locked in her room with the windows nailed shut, had her head shaved and mustard plasters applied to drive out whatever (devils?) was making her crazy, and that was done by “doctor!” Easton has a record setting number of cemeteries and they were certainly not well watched in the old days. In 1862, the body of a murdered girl was exhumed in secret from one of the largest cemeteries in town and disappeared without a trace. So shall we say “Anything is possible?”

The good news is that there has never been a hint of werewolves in Easton! On the other hand, one of the witches allegedly could turn into a cat, and reports of the Big Black Cat of Poquanticut continue to this day.

Two Tours

Steady readers of the Curiosity Shop Blog know that I've tracked some long lost relatives to the West Coast. Two of them will be visiting New England next week so yesterday I decided to visit the grave of my Grandfather Hands at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plains. I'm not sure the West Coast folks have ever been there so I'm planning to show them the site. Genealogists generally consider all cemeteries as tourist attractions, but Forest Hills is above and beyond.

I hadn't visited Forest Hills since my grandmother died in 1967 so I stopped at the cemetery office, an elaborate Gothic structure. A nice young lady welcomed me and quickly confirmed that Grandpa Hands was still there. Great. The next thing I knew she had pulled out the plot map with the record of all the burials, a treasure trove of information for a researcher. She kindly made a xerox. Then out came a large scale map of the cemetery and directions to the site. The map wasn't an office version, it was mine to keep.

I had already donated a dollar for a smaller map with the history of the cemetery on the way into the office. I noticed a glossy book for sale in the office and asked what it was. "Oh, that's our tour book," the helpful woman said. They want you to visit-no dead relatives needed. And Fido is welcome too as long as he or she is on a leash. I could have brought Maggie. She's banned from the Blue Hills Cemetery where the rest of the family is buried.

If the thought of touring a cemetery gives you the willies, you need to know that Forest Hill is one of those garden cemeteries so popular in the mid-19th century. It's old section is one of Boston's premier landscapes with trees more than a century old. The landscaping design is so good it actually influenced Olmsted's plan for nearby Franklin Park. It is also an outstanding collection of outdoor sculpture. Add in the resting places of famous Bostonians, and you have an interesting place for a visit. I bet the birding is good too. Go in the spring or fall and you'll be surprised.

Finding the last of the Hands' was interesting too. The father-in-law of the immigrant ancestor bought the plot in 1900 and over the last 100 years Colemans, Lothrops, and Hands have come to stay. Since my visit in 1967, the grandfather of my West Coast relatives was buried in 1977, and on one side of the stone is an entire Hands family that neither of the newly reconnected sides of the family has ever heard of with the last burial in 2010!

Well, eventually, the trusty Garmin got me home and Maggie made it very clear that she knew it was a beautiful day and I had neglected her through the first half of it. I decided to continue my visits to Trustees of Reservations properties with a trip to Moose Hill Farm. This is not to be confused with the Audubon's adjacent Moose Hill property which is a 2,000 acre wildlife sanctuary-no dogs leashed or unleashed on its 25 miles of trails. What a great choice by Audubon-2,000 acres of unmolested wildlife make Moose Hill a key to the ecology of the whole region including Easton. The Trustees welcome leashed dogs on their farm, but you need to be careful and watch the signs since some of the trails on the two properties connect.

The over 300 acres at Moose Hill Farm mix a large open field, part of which was being plowed for a new Community Supported Agriculture program next year, and a variety of woodland habitats. There are marked trails and a readily available map, but I must admit it was a little more confusing than the Bradley Estate or Signal Hill. We decided to do the field walk which goes uphill at a gentle rate. If you look back from the top of the field, you are rewarded with a great view of the Blue Hills. Moose Hill is the second highest piece of land in the area. While I was thrilled by the view, Maggie got her thrill from the abundant scent marking done by the local coyotes. A large pile of scat had her sizing up the chances of attacking a wild canid-after all in her mind she scared a Bernese Mountain Dog out of the vets on our last visit. Luckily for someone, probably me, nothing bigger than a chipmunk made an appearance. The variety of habitats look like good birding territory, but right now our own Governor Ames Community Park has more birds.

All in all, Moose Hill Farm is a place that will repay repeated visits. Like all the Trustees property I've seen, it is well maintained. I had a nice chat with a staff member who I ran into in the parking lot. She was friendly and enthusiastic and working on making a number of properties universally accessible for people with walkers and wheelchairs. She has already checked out the Easton property. I was heartily thanked for my annual membership unlike a local conservation group that barely acknowledges my existence despite a life membership. Nice people make a difference.