Another invader from the South

From ecoRI News

Cliff Vanover knew something was wrong one night while traveling in upstate New York in 1995. His palms got itchy, then he got hives, then ‘my body was one solid hive,’ he said. He had gone into anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction.

“His wife had antihistamines for her own allergies, so he took some and the symptoms subsided. But then it happened again. ‘I had no allergies at the time,’ Vanover said, so he went to an allergist, who did a series of scratch tests. The Charlestown, R.I., resident learned he was allergic to beef, lamb, and pork.

“Although there was no name for it three decades ago, when Vanover contracted it, he had what is now known as alpha-gal syndrome. It’s caused by the bite of a lone star tick, and it’s going to become a lot more prevalent here in New England {as they move north}.’’

To read the full article, by Bonnie Phillips, please hit this link.

What causes earthquakes in the Northeast?

An 18th-Century woodcut taken from a religious tract showing the effects of the Cape Ann Earthquake, on Nov. 18, 1755, whose magnitude is believed to have been at 6.0-6.3 on the Richter scale.

From The Conversation

It’s rare to feel earthquakes in the U.S. Northeast, so the magnitude 4.8 earthquake in New Jersey that shook buildings in New York City and was felt from Maryland to Boston on April 5, 2024, drew a lot of questions. It was one of the strongest earthquakes on record in New Jersey, though there were few reports of damage. A smaller, magnitude 3.8 earthquake and several other smaller aftershocks rattled the region a few hours later. We asked geoscientist Gary Solar to explain what causes earthquakes in this region.

There are many ancient faults in that part of New Jersey that extend through Philadelphia and along the Appalachians, and the other direction, past New York City and into western New England.

These are fractures where gravity can cause the rock on either side to slip, causing the ground to shake. There is no active tectonic plate motion in the area today, but there was about 250 million to 300 million years ago.

The Ramapo Fault, in green, is a major fault zone in New Jersey. The red dots indicate earthquakes of magnitude 3 or higher, reported by the U.S. Geological Survey and National Earthquake Information Center. Alan Kafka/Wikimedia

The earthquake activity in New Jersey on April 5 is similar to the 3.8 magnitude earthquake that we experienced in 2023 in Buffalo, New York. In both cases, the shaking was from gravitational slip on those ancient structures.

In short, rocks slip a little on steep, preexisting fractures. That’s what happened in New Jersey, assuming there was no man-made trigger.

Magnitude 4.8 is pretty large, especially for the Northeast, but it’s likely to have minor effects compared with the much larger ones that cause major damage and loss of life.

The scale used to measure earthquakes is logarithmic, so each integer is a factor of 10. That means a magnitude 6 earthquake is 10 times larger than a magnitude 5 earthquake. The bigger ones, like the magnitude 7.4 earthquake in Tawian a few days earlier, are associated with active plate margins, where two tectonic plates meet.

The vulnerability of buildings to a magnitude 4.8 earthquake would depend on the construction. The building codes in places like California are very strict because California has a major plate boundary fault system – the San Andreas system. New Jersey does not, and correspondingly, building codes don’t account for large earthquakes as a result.

Earthquakes are actually pretty common in the Northeast, but they’re usually so small that few people feel them. The vast majority are magnitude 2.5 or less.

The rare large ones like this are generally not predictable. However, there will likely not be other large earthquakes of similar size in that area for a long time. Once the slip happens in a region like this, the gravitational problem on that ancient fault is typically solved and the system is more stable.

That isn’t the case for active plate margins, like in Turkey, which has had devastating earthquakes in recent years, or rimming the Pacific Ocean. In those areas, tectonic stresses constantly build up as the plates slowly move, and earthquakes are from a failure to stick.

This article, originally published April 5, 2024, has been updated with several smaller aftershocks felt in the region.

Fearsome forest

Panorama showing Mt. Liberty, Mt. Flume, parts of the Pemigewasset Wilderness, and parts of Franconia Notch State Park in the White Mountains.

“New Hampshire is one big forest. So apart from the very occasional town or ski resort, New Hampshire is primarily, sometimes dauntingly, wilderness. And its hills are loftier, craggier, more difficult and forbidding than Vermont’s.’’

— From A Walk in the Woods (1998), by Bill Bryson, about hiking up the Appachian Trail.

History of Easter in New England

Dressed up for Easter in Boston in 1936.

— Boston Public Library photo

Text excerpted from a New England Historical Society article.

“Easter Sunday traditions in New England have long included dying eggs, wearing new clothes, baking hot cross buns and attending sunrise services. They are based on pagan superstitions, which of course is why the Puritans didn’t celebrate the holiday. (The Puritans didn’t like Christmas, either.) For the early Puritans, celebrating the Lord’s Day 52 times a year was quite enough.

“Others brought traditions from Europe. Germans believed, for example, that rabbits laid beautifully colored eggs on Easter.

“Franco-Americans rose before the sun came up to fetch water, which they called Peau de Paques, from a stream. They believed it had miraculous qualities, staying pure indefinitely. They washed with it, drank it and saved it.

““Easter usually (though not always) falls later for members of the Greek Orthodox Church than for other Christians. On the holiday itself, Greek Orthodox Christians used to greet each other by saying, “Christ has risen.” The response: “Truly he has risen.”

“Italian-Americans have a number of sayings about Easter, including ‘happy as Easter’ (which means someone is happy) or ‘as long as Lent’ (which means something is long).’’

To read the full article, please hit this link.

Trying to save horseshoe crabs

Horseshoe crabs mating.

Edited from a ecoRI News article by Frank Carini

“Ancient creatures with 12 legs, 10 eyes, and blue blood were once so prevalent on southern New England beaches that people, including children, were paid to kill them.

“Their helmet-like bodies can still be seen along the region’s coastline and around its salt marshes, but in a fraction of the numbers witnessed seven decades ago. There are several reasons why.

“In the 1950s coastal New England paid fishermen and others bounties to kill the up to 2-feet-long arachnids — horseshoe crabs are more closely related to spiders, scorpions and ticks than to crabs — because they interfered with human enjoyment of the shore and were viewed as shellfish predators….

“People, not just fishermen, were reportedly encouraged to toss horseshoe crabs above the high-tide line, so they would dry out and die. They were labeled ‘pests’ and ground up for fertilizer. Beachfront property owners were apparently concerned the creature’s presence and their decaying death would impact real estate values.

{Horseshoe crabs are harvested for their blood’s medical applications.}

“Those ignorant days may be over, but horseshoe crabs are facing other threats to their existence.’’

“The Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based nonprofit, and 22 partner organizations recently petitioned NOAA Fisheries to list the Atlantic horseshoe crab as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act….’’

To read the whole article, please hit this link.

Commercialized love in New England

Sweethearts were made by the New England Confectionery Company, or Necco, before being purchased by the Spangler Candy Company in 2018.

Read The New England Historical Society’s look at the history of Valentine’s Day in New England.

Birds' spring songs may be coming earlier

Chickadees’ songs cheer up New Englanders in their shortening winters. The species shown here, the Black-Capped Chickadee, is the state bird of Massachusetts.

Song sparrow

Text from ecoRI News

‘On any given, relatively warm winter day, the melodies of song sparrows and chickadees float down from the trees.

“Hearing birdsong in early winter is both a natural and unnatural phenomenon, according to ornithologists. As days get longer and warmer, the birds’ internal clocks urge them to sing.

“That’s why you may hear birds that live here year-round, like the chickadee, or that winter here but breed father north, like the American robin, sing during nice weather, according to Salve Regina University professor Jameson Chase. ‘So, not unusual and certainly not on warm days.’

“But with spring-like weather coming earlier and earlier due to climate change, some of the songs of the season may be coming a little earlier, too.’’

Please hit this link to read the whole article, by Colleen Cronin

They did what they had to do

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), in his official presidential portrait, painted in 1875. He was, of course, the greatest Civil War general, and while his presidential reputation was sullied by corruption by some people in his administration, historians in recent years have raised their view of his two terms in office. The ancestors of Grant’s father emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony from England in the 1630’s.

The greenish-yellow area has been expanding north at an accelerating rate in the past few decades. The climate of New England was considerably colder than now during “The Little Ice Age,’’ 1300-1850.

  “They [the Pilgrim Fathers] fell upon an ungenial climate, where there were nine months of winter and three months of cold weather and that called out the best energies of the men, and of the women too, to get a mere subsistence out of the soil, with such a climate. In their efforts to do that they cultivated industry and frugality at the same time—which is the real foundation of the greatness of the Pilgrims.’’

From the speech by Ulysses S. Grant at a New England Society Dinner in New York on Dec. 22, 1880.

And healthily ignore reality

“Withstanding the cold {in New England} develops vigor for the relaxing days of spring and summer. Besides, in this matter as in many others, it is evident that nature abhors a quitter.”

― Arthur C. Crandall, in New England Joke Lore: The Tonic of Yankee Humor

A new group will address region’s housing shortages

Three-decker housing in Worcester.

From The New England Council

The New England Council is pleased to announce the establishment of a new cross-sector Housing Working Group. The new Working Group will bring together council members from various sectors throughout the region to work collaboratively to address the housing shortages plaguing the region.

The New England region faces an unprecedented shortage of housing at all levels – everything from affordable rental units, to middle-income single-family homes. The shortages are having a negative impact on the region’s economy, making it difficult for employers to attract and retain talent, and making the region less attractive for businesses to locate and expand here.

The new Housing Working Group will focus on:

• Identifying and supporting federal policy proposals that aim to increase housing supply.

• Educating federal policymakers about the impact of the shortages and impediments to solving the crisis.

• Fostering collaboration across different sectors and across state lines.

The Working Group is open to any council member who is interested in working on this issue, and will host its first meeting on Thursday, Feb. 15. Council members can register HERE. 

If you have any questions about this new initiative, please contact Griffin Doherty, director of Federal Affairs.

Thin religiosity and archaic roads

On a typically narrow Boston road — Hull Street. From left to right: the Skinny House, the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge and the Copp's Hill Burying Ground. The Skinny House, built soon after the Civil War, is reportedly the most narrow in Boston, and is said to have been built to spite the neighbors.

“Even after thirty years, I still think New Englanders sound funny, that they expect too much of the Red Sox, that their religiosity is more procedural than deeply felt, and that their highways are built with the conviction that automobiles could not possibly replace the horse-drawn buggy, and therefore need not be wide, permanent, or especially well-designed.’’

-- C. Michael Curtis (1934-2023) in New England Stories (1992). A New York City native, he was the long-time fiction editor of The Atlantic (magazine ), which was based in Boston from its founding, in 1857, until it was moved to Washington, D.C., in 2006

First Unitarian Church of Providence.

Honesty and guilt

Boston Common in 1768.

“The Yankee mind was quick and sharp, but mainly it was singularly honest.’’

— Van Wyck Brooks (1886-1963), historian and critic, in The Flowering of New England

xxx

“The New England conscience does not stop you from doing what you shouldn’t; it just stops you from enjoying. it .’’

— Cleveland Amory (1917-1998), writer and animal-rights advocate. He came from a Boston Brahmin family.

Symbols of New England

The stone wall at the farm in Derry, N.H., where Robert Frost lived with his family in 1901-1911. He described the wall in his famous and complex poem "Mending Wall".

Stone wall in Maine

From the New England Historical Society:

“New England stone walls are as distinctive a feature of the landscape as bayous in Louisiana or redwoods in California. Hundreds of thousands of miles of them criss-cross the region like so much grillwork.’

Hit this link to read the article “Seven Fun Facts About New England’s Stone Walls.

And this for more surprising history.

Dukes of documentation

Letter from The Rev. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) to Massachusetts Judge William Stoughton (1631-1701), dated Sept. 2, 1692

— Photo by Lewismr

Massachusetts Historical Society headquarters, Boston. It houses a treasure trove of historical New England documents

— Photo by Biruitorul

“The men who founded and governed Massachusetts and Connecticut took themselves so seriously that they kept track of everything they did for the benefit of posterity and hoarded their papers so carefully that the whole history of the United States, recounted mainly by their descendants, has often appeared to be the history of New England writ large.”

— Edmund Morgan (1916-2013), Yale history professor

Of blueberries and sunburns

“Summer Twilight, A Recollection of a Scene in New-England’’ (oil on wood, 1834), by British-born American painter Thomas Cole (1801—1848), of the Hudson River School of painters

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal 24.com

As we move deeper into high summer,  the green of the trees and grass is less intense, as are the scents of flowers and  the volume of birdsong. Soon the goldenrod will blaze by the roads. On some days we settle into an agreeable torpor,  perhaps more socially acceptable in July than in any other month in our workaholic nation. And it’s a time in which to read long novels, biographies and histories, albeit nodding off from time to time while doing it.

 Ah, cookouts! The smell of burning flesh. Yellow jackets! Ants! Snakes (usually just garter snakes)! The distinctive smell of lighter fluid to ignite the charcoal. Squirrels eyeing the proceedings, ready, like the birds, to  swiftly move in for any food  detritus we accidentally left behind.

One of the pleasures of summer in New England is stopping by blackberry, blueberry and raspberry bushes and feeding yourself with these tart or sweet  “antioxidant-rich superfoods”. By the way, wild blueberries, which famously cover a lot of ‘’barrens’’ in Downeast Maine, taste better than the cultivated ones.

A walk on a beach this summer, or along many otherwise pretty roads, shows you how urgently Rhode Island needs a bottle bill.

Do you still follow those old summer myths – e.g., that swimming after eating will give you cramps that could end up drowning you? No it won’t. Or that getting a tan is healthy. “You look healthy!, ‘’ our parents used to say to our sunburned faces, in a mistake that you can trace back to the 1920’s, when having a tan started to be associated  with the leisure time of the affluent rather than with farmers and day laborers. Getting your tan in such sexy places as Florida, California and the French Riviera gave you a particular status.

Now, after decades of skin-cancer removals, a couple rather gory, I head for the shade as much as I can.

Information, please

We seek suggestions about interesting, dynamic people aged 70 or over, and in New England, to interview who are still working because they want to.

Please send suggested names to:

rwhitcomb4@cox.net

History of India in New England; Llewellyn King on what holds back that huge nation

Sri Lakshmi {Hindu} Temple, in Ashland, Mass.

— Photo by Tshiv

From “The Indian Presence in New England: People and Ideas” . Hit this link to read the whole article.

“There were some exceptions to this general atmosphere of non-acceptance {of Indians in America}. In general, the intellectuals of the Northeast were not active participants in such overt racialized discourse. Jane Jensen states that New England intellectuals developed a deep interest in Indian religions in the early 19th century, at about the time the New England-India trade developed. She describes how Boston society became interested in Indian literature and in Indian religions, especially Hinduism, Buddhism and the Brahmo Samaj movement. Intellectuals at universities such as Harvard began to cultivate an active scholarship and also initiated a nascent Indian art collection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The theosophical writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, as well as Walt Whitman’s poems (such as “Passage to India” and “Leaves of Grass”), are reflective of this trend. These earlier writings of the Transcendentalists, on the “life of the spirit” (developed on the basis of an earlier encounters with Hinduism), prepared the ground for Vivekananda and his message.’’

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

By Llewellyn King

WEST WARWICK, R.I.

By the diplomatic hoopla in Washington that greeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, it would seem that intrepid U.S. explorers had just discovered India and were celebrating him in the way Britain treated tribal leaders in the 19th Century: Show them the big time. Then co-opt them to vow allegiance.

In this century, the U.S. equivalent of the big time is a state visit and endless professions of friendship. Experience says Modi won’t bite.

Historically, India has been reluctant to accept the embrace of the West. Although it is democratic, capitalist and has the largest diaspora, India’s affections have been hard to capture.

Since independence from Britain in 1947, India has sought global status by standing aloof and leaning toward countries and regimes that are anathema to the West. Its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, fostered the concept of a third force in the world: a constellation of unaligned nations with India at the center.

It showed a perverse affection for the Soviet Union — which was hardly nonaligned — and didn’t reflect the values of India: free movement of people, free press, capitalism and democracy.

Years ago, a retired executive editor of the Times of India, whom I knew socially, told me, “There are maybe a million Indians living in the United States and only a handful who live in the Soviet Union, but our leaders have always leaned toward them. It is a puzzle.” 

There are now 4.2 million Indians living in the United States.

At the same time, Indians migrated across the world and made inroads into professions from Canada to New Zealand. In Britain, they are prominent in politics and the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is of Indian descent.

In the United States, executives of Indian descent run some of the largest tech companies, including IBM, Google and Microsoft.

Indians are a huge force in English literature. Every year Indian writers feature on the prize lists for best new English novels. Whereas the computers most of us use may have been made in China, much of the software was written in India.

Indian words abound in English: Pajamas, ketchup, bungalow, jungle, avatar, verandah, juggernaut and cot are just a few.

The effect of Indian culture on the world is evident from curry and rice to polo to yoga.

Yet, India remains a distant shore, elusive and obvious at the same time. A country of enormous talent that lags economically. It now has the fifth-largest economy in the world. With 1.4 billion people, many of whom of obvious ability, the question must be, why does it still have crushing poverty?

Andres Carvallo, professor of innovation at Texas State University, told the “Digital 360” webinar, for which I am a regular panelist, he thought it was partly because India lagged in essential electricity production, pointing out that China has four times the electricity output of India.

But is this symptom or cause? I have been puzzling over why India doesn’t do better for decades. It seems to me that the causes are multiple, but some can be laid at Britain’s feet — not because the British were occupiers in India but because of some of the good things they left there that have perversely remained time-warped.

One of India’s ambassadors to Washington told me with pride that every occupier had enriched India and left something of value behind, from Alexander the Great to the Moguls and, of course, Britain and the Raj.

But the Brits also left behind a sluggish bureaucracy to the point of sclerosis and a legal system that is independent but takes an eternity to reach a decision. Additionally, some of the ideas prevalent in British Labor Party thinking — and long since abandoned — took hold in India and have been extremely detrimental. These included protectionism, a state’s role in the economy, and a fear of competition from abroad.

I believe that protectionism is the greatest evil. It discouraged competition, innovation and creativity. It inadvertently allowed a few families to concentrate too much wealth and economic power and to work to protect that.

India is more open now, but it needs to be vigilant against the evils that go with protectionism, which is still part of its DNA.

At one time, you could buy a brand-new Indian made-car — Fiat or Morris design — which was 30 years out of date. No need to innovate; just make the same car year after year.

If it liberalizes its economy, India may one day outpace China. Meantime, do luxuriate in those Indian words that have so spiced up English.

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He’s based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.
 

On Twitter: @llewellynking2

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Being adaptable

“If you've worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you live in New England.’’

“If you have switched from 'heat' to 'A/C' in the same day and back again, you live in New England .”

—Jeff Foxworthy (born 1958), American actor, author, comedian, producer and writer. He grew up in Georgia.

Heat pumps are particularly effective in places with wildly variable temperatures such as New England.

Beech tree disease imperils forest ecosystem

American beech tree

— Photo by Jean-Pol GRANDMONT

From ecoRI News (ecori.org) article by Mike Freeman

Beech leaf disease, which has devastated northern hardwood forests since its discovery in Ohio in 2012, has spread throughout Rhode Island’s beech trees.

“It would change the whole forest ecosystem if they go,” said Heather Faubert, director of the University of Rhode Island’s Plant Protection Clinic. “We know what’s infected them but don’t know yet how it spreads, only that it spreads very quickly. It was first identified in Ashaway in 2020 and is now statewide.”

The disease is infecting beech trees in all New England states except Vermont, and was first detected in Connecticut in 2019.

Faubert’s general description tracks the terrible template that has wiped out or is en route to wiping out several native North American tree species. Details differ, but the plot never changes: People notice dying trees, a cause is identified, swaths of forest succumb as more becomes known, then to various effects preventative, palliative, or restorative measures are taken, often in combination. American chestnut exists on life support, American elm is greatly diminished, and currently eastern hemlock, the entire ash genus, and now American beech are all in dire peril.

As Faubert noted, what exactly causes beech leaf disease (BLD) and how it spreads are currently unknown, though the critical vector is Litylenchus crenatae mccannii, a nearly microscopic nematode, or worm, that feeds on beech leaves.

To read the whole article, please hit this link.

Your N.E. house-tour assistant

William (“Willit’’ ) Mason, M.D., has written has a delightful  – and very handy --  book rich with photos and colorful anecdotes,  called Guidebook to Historic Houses and Gardens in New England: 71 Sites from the Hudson Valley East (iUniverse, 240 pages. Paperback. $22.95). Oddly,  given the cultural and historical richness of New England and the Hudson Valley, no one else has done a book quite like this before.

 The blurb on the back of the book neatly summarizes his story.

“When Willit Mason retired in the summer of 2015, he and his wife decided to celebrate with a grand tour of the Berkshires and the Hudson Valley of New York.

While they intended to enjoy the area’s natural beauty, they also wanted to visit the numerous historic estates and gardens that lie along the Hudson River and the hills of the Berkshires.

But Mason could not find a guidebook highlighting the region’s houses and gardens, including their geographic context, strengths, and weaknesses. He had no way of knowing if one location offered a terrific horticultural experience with less historical value or vice versa.

Mason wrote this comprehensive guide of 71 historic New England houses and gardens to provide an overview of each site. Organized by region, it makes it easy to see as many historic houses and gardens in a limited time.

Filled with family histories, information on the architectural development of properties and overviews of gardens and their surroundings, this is a must-have guide for any New England traveler.’’

Dr. Mason noted of his tours: “Each visit has captured me in different ways, whether it be the scenic views, architecture of the houses, gardens and landscape architecture or collections of art. As we have learned from Downton Abbey, every house has its own personal story. And most of the original owners of the houses I visited in preparing the book have made significant contributions to American history.’’

To order a book, please go to www.willitmason.com

 #Great New England houses