"Sharp, quirky, and occasionally nettlesome", Walking the Berkshires is my personal blog, an eclectic weaving of human narrative, natural history, and conservation science with the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills as both its backdrop and point of departure. I am interested in how land and people, past and present manifest in the broader landscape and social fabric of our communities. The opinions I express here are mine alone.
"Sumer is icumen in" at 23:59 this evening, to be precise. Still, I rather doubt that any of the 8 North American members of the Cuckoo family will be heard singing outside my window on the Solstice, lhude or otherwise. However, if I were in the desert southwest - and a bit gullible - I might hope to hear one of them go "Beep Beep!" Yes, the family Cuculidae includes cuckoos, roadrunners and anis.
We have plenty of "Wile E" Coyotes hereabouts, though. Lhude howl awoo?
Americans have a longstanding fondness for David and Goliath stories, particularly those in which our scrappy homegrown underdogs beard the oppressing giant. They are an established part of our national myth and cultural heritage. Longfellow captivates his readers with tales of "...how the farmers gave them ball for ball / From behind each fence and farmyard wall" and turned back the British after Concord. "John Henry drove his fifteen feet, An' the steam drill only made nine, Lawd, Lawd..." And for those of us or a certain age or older, The Miracle on Ice. Even after suffering tremendous losses, we are quick to salvage something of our own, such as Doolittle's bombing raid on Japan, a forlorn hope that became a great propaganda victory just 4 months after Peal Harbor.
Local history abounds with these stories, from Sybil Ludington's Ride to Barbara Fritchie waving the flag of Union at Stonewall's confederates as they marched toward Pennsylvania. I came across a classic tale of this sort recently from the maritime history of Massachusetts during the War of 1812, the story of the two daughters of a lighthouse keeper who by pluck and invention saved their town from the British marauders. The tale, like all good yarns, may have grown in the telling, but young Rebecca and Abigail Bates are widely remembered in New England lore, poetry and folksong as the "American Army of Two".
The story goes that Simeon Bates was the keeper of the lighthouse at Scituate on the shores of Massachusetts Bay and lived there with his family during the War of 1812. He had a number of children, but the two principals in this tale are Rebecca, who based on her obituary would have been about 20 at the time this story takes place, and Abigail, who was about 13. Early in September, 1814, a British warship was sighted offshore and prepared to launch barges toward the lighthouse. Simeon Bates was away from the Lighthouse and only his wife and the two girls were on hand. The girls, knowing the militia would not get there in time, decided to hide from view and play a fife and drum to make the enemy think the soldiers were coming. They struck up Yankee Doodle, the British ceased to row, and the warship recalled them and left, much to the joy of the young saviors of Scituate, the Army of Two.
It is a wonderful story. It delighted young readers of St. Nicholas Magazine, which ran the story "Rebecca the Drummer" in July 1874 written by Charles Barnard and based on an elderly Rebecca Bates' recollection of the event. Rebecca Bates went so far as to sell affidavits of her story for 10 cents. There were apparently contemporary doubters of the tale, as well as at least one modern one. Nonetheless, Becky's sister Abby (who survived her) was reportedly borne to her grave by uniformed G.A.R. veterans and since then her account has been widely repeated as if factual. If the extensive research by the Scituate Historical Society concludes the story is likely true, we are not likely to settle the matter further with some on-line sleuthing, but let us see what further details we can add from the historic record.
The blockading British apparently approached Scituate by sea on three occasions between June 11 and July 9th in 1814. The June 11th raid two place as barges from two British ships entered Scituate harbor and burned or carried off a number of vessels. Captain John Mason, a boy of about 9 years at the time of the raid, later recalled that the British took three fishing vessels as prizes - "Orient", "Sophronia", and his own father's "Rosebud", and burned five or six others. A History of Scituate published in 1831 says that "ten vessels, fishing and coastal craft, were lost". Mason also stated that the barges belonged to the British frigate "Nymph" and 74 gun "La Hogue", though the latter named vessel has not been discovered among the navy list at the time and the Scituate History referenced above claims they came from the 74-gun "Bulwark".
It is not clear whether he was referring to this raid or a subsequent landing, but a biographical entry for Captain Mason records that he "remembered once when a fleet of these boats were coming in, that the women began to carry off their beds and furniture, but an officer in one of the British boats cried out, "Good women don't carry your beds off, we ain't going to hurt you." The British did not disembark when burning the ships in the harbor on June 11th. Six days later on June 17th, according to committee reports from the 30th United States Congress; "a British ship-of-war, two brigs, and several small craft came to anchor near Scituate harbor..." Col. John Barstow's militia were called out on July 9th when a British warship, variously identified as the "Bulwark" by some and by Congress as the "Nymph", demanded provisions from the town which were not furnished. The militia remained on guard that summer but the British did not reappear.
It is no wonder that these three events became tangled up in people's minds. Whether "Bulwark" or "Nymph" demanded vegetables or burned ships is a matter for those with access to the logs in the admiralty records. As to the fourth and final British approach - the one reportedly thwarted by the musical Becky and Abby Bates - that took place in late summer, either August or early September, and is recalled by one additional eye-witness, Ensign Otis, who "upon rising early saw a English ship anchoring off the harbor and warned the inhabitants of the little village." The version of the story printed in St. Nicholas (which has Rebecca as the drummer, unlike other accounts where she is said to have played the fife), also describes the British arriving offshore in the morning at low tide, and only launching boats at high tide around 2 p.m. This tale conflates events from previous raids and was written to inspire young readers with the heroism of the Bates girls so must be taken with a heavy dose of salt.
C. Wellington Furlong, who as a small boy summered in Scituate, later recalled;
"Next door to the Merritts lived Becky Bates, then a very old woman, who, in boyish wonderment I often watched her pull her corn cob pipe and listen to her story. During this war the British four gun HMS Bulwark in 1814 sent boats into the harbor and burned the shipping because the selectmen of the town, descendants of the Men of Kent, obstinately refused their demand for supplies. Not long after, Becky told me, another British warship, the HMS La Hogue appeared, dropped anchor a mile or so offshore and her barges loaded with marines pulled toward the harbor with obvious intention of burning the town. Becky, then about 16 was alone in the lighthouse with her younger sister Abigail. Becky quickly seized her brother’s fife and her younger sister Abigail the drum. Sneaking out of their lighthouse home they followed behind the cedar covered sand hills of the point, beating a lively tattoo to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” The marines, who had believed the town undefended, hearing the rhythmic strains wafted toward the ship’s boat, thought the town garrison was marching out, returned to the ship and the La Hogue sailed away."
Whether or not things transpired as later remembered and long repeated, no churlish iconoclast has definitively debunked the legend of the American Army of Two, and far be it from me to do so. Becky and Abby Bates remain heroines in the hearts of many, and why not?
News of the death on May 23rd of folksinger and storyteller U. Utah Phillips made me wish I had had the chance to hear him live. There would have been a lot more talking than playing, some of it hysterically funny, some poignant and moving. A lot of hip, progressive 20 somethings were introduced to Phillips through his collaboration with Ani DiFranco, and most notably their 1996 CD The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, combining his classic stories with her contemporary scoring. They cut a second disc in 1999 called Fellow Workers, but their previous effort was the true groundbreaker.
Utah was the son of union organizers, a rider of rails, hobo troubadour and pacifist army veteran. He was a great fan of trains. Before a heart condition forced him to cut back his appearances, he was a road musician who played 120 shows a year. He was loved by many.
"To the May-pole let us on, The time is swift and will be gone!"
"All fair lasses have lads to attend 'em, Jolly, brave dancers who can amend 'em."
"Come together, come, sweet lass, Let us trip it on the grass."
- Traditional Bryn Mawr May Day Song, last heard by me (and probably frumiousb) on Grand May Day, 1990. The one day when Mawrters wear white.
This morning, though, the greeny grass in my part of the southern Berkshires, or northern Litchfield Hills if you prefer, is white with hoarfrost. Even the hardy spring ephemerals are drooping from the cold. It is shaping up to be a chilly day but bright and clear. If I do end up tripping it on the grass with my sweet lass, we'll likely be bundled up.
I could not be happier. Personal favorites include Bob Mould doing "Turning of the Tide" and Mary Black's version of "I Misunderstood." And if, like me, you picked up the 5 CD RT on Free Reed Boxed Set, there's an entire disc of Thompson covering other folks and playing with other folks covering him.
It is bad luck to be stung by a scorpion (it happened to me once when a small one got in my sleeping bag in Namibia). If you are a world class guitarist and that scorpion stings your right hand, it is more unlucky still. If you were planning, like Viv and me, to see Richard Thompson tomorrow night at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, or anywhere else on his April tour, RT is recovering but has postponed all of these gigs until October.
The man called the 19th greatest guitarist of all time is 59. During the 1980s his album "Shoot Out The Lights" with 1st wife Linda Thompson was called one of the top ten of the decade by Rolling Stone. Richard Thompson is hands down my favorite musician: period, full stop. No other singer/composer comes close for sheer virtuosity and word craft. The workouts he can give a guitar can reach delirious, epic proportions.His patter between songs during solo shows is hysterically funny, though while there is a strong streak of oddball sensibility in his lyrics he can do a mournful ballad as well or better than anyone else in the business. Have a listen.I'm greatly looking forward to his upcoming show at the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington just up the road on April 19th.
1. The only lines you know to every song you've ever sung are "doo-bee-do-bee-do." (Hat Tip, Joe Stern)
2. You own some truly embarrassing clothing along with your various jackets and ties. Mine includes a bowling shirt in my school colors that says "Rock and Bowl" on the back and is monogrammed "Joe Acapella". Two examples appear in the alumni concert photo at left, but I, cleverly, do not.
3. All the garage bands when you were growing up had singers who played instruments and weren't in the market for geeky front men. Their loss.
4. You think an arrangement of Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" in 4-part harmony is what the world needs now.
5. You believe that public spaces are just opportunities to perform without a permit.
6. Spring break for you was all about road trips in vans, dropping in on distant relatives and singing for your supper.
7. You think it would be awesome, but have not yet attempted, to perform the entire B side of Abbey Road unaccompanied. That, or something by Prince, or Kiss, or "Kiss" by Prince. It's all good.
8. You have a glaring omission from your resume under "group memberships." Surprisingly, not everyone thinks A-Capella rocks.
9. Your iPod has 50 college groups that never sell more than 500 copies of their latest CD in heavy rotation.
10. You describe your college years as "like being in a fraternity or playing on the varsity, but not."
Strap on those brass goggles and gas up the zeppelin, honey. The 5th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities is heavily into Steampunk. What could be more curious than a branch of speculative fiction spawning an entire alternative lifestyle for retro, do-it-yourselfers with a flair for dark wood and brass rivets?
Steampunk is a fantasy genre where form trumps function and sword canes co-exist with ray-guns and pith helmets. It is also a style of art and design. The Boston Globe describes it this way:
"Steampunk has its roots in science fiction literature, where it describes a corner of the genre obsessed with Victoriana and the idea that the computer age evolved alongside the industrial. Steampunk stories, which started appearing with regularity in the 1980s, eschew clean and orderly visions of the future in favor of gas-lighted streets, steam engines belching toxic smoke, and dastardly villains inventing strange technologies. Dirigibles rule the air, and the upper classes employ clockwork servants to serve their meals."
Steampunk tips its hat to the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, as well as Twain, Lovecraft and, one assumes, Frank L Baum, whose oeuvre has many beloved Steampunk elements (Tin Man, Tik-Tok and those great green goggles). Films like Wild Wild West and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, while box office duds, are classics of Steampunk sensibility. 19th-century inventors Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison are often cited as Steampunk idols, but I would think there would be ample room in the pantheon for Alexander Graham Bell:
"Alexander Graham Bell Note the name and note it well Father of the modern age His inventions are all the rage Of course there was the telephone He’d be famous for that alone But there’s 50 other things as well From Alexander Graham Bell"
From there you can follow links to the wondrous creations of AlexCF, a retrofuture cryptozoological assemblage artist, who will be more than happy to show you his wares. His necropathic spectregraph (shown at left and auctioned at eBay) looks particularly handy for all you spiritualists.
If you are really having trouble with gaslight poltergeists, then Ectoplasmosis! recommends you call a Steampunk ghostbuster. The gentleman in question (pictured at right) was spotted at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con last summer.
"Beautiful, weird, hand-machined -- this is not just art attached to an existing quartz movement, but a fully realized working pendulum clock out of brass and rice paper. The particular clock's inspiration is based on the calligraphy of the numbers."
Steampunk is where the cool kids from shop class go to play. The grand master of this gears 'n goggles breed of engineers is Jake Von Slatt, proprietor of The Steampunk Workshop where keyboards get tricked out in electrolytic etched brass and fellow DIYers take his ideas and run with them.
The most recent elaboration on a Von Slatt theme is this much envied MacMini monitor and keyboard, pimped out in Steampunk glory by Dave Veloz.
All it needs is a Steampunk furnace mouse with glowing LED coal!
If you are not handy at hand-tooling machinery, you can still get your Steampunk on with all sorts of fanciful garb through the Aether Emporium.
The Heliograph profiles some Steampunk fashion pinups from photographer Kat Bret if you are in need of further inspiration.
Nor is the Steampunk aesthetic restricted to some Anglo-American tech-nexus. From Uruguay, Marie shares some fantastical Steampunk illumination devices.
Given all this mad tinkering, it is not surprising that Penny Dreadfully Steampunk is all the rage at Esty: purveyors-at-large of all things handmade.
Going Like Sixty observes that late boomers, like Steampunk itself, are "suitably old, but mysteriously advanced."
You can get your very own Pavoni PG-16 Romantica 16-cup Espresso Machine in brass for just under 1K at Amazon - a must have for the Steampunk dream kitchen - or maybe you can get your gauntlets on this Etienne Louis, mechanical hedgehog looking design (at right), previewed at ESP Visuals. Actually, it looks even more like a WWI era anti-ship mine to me, but maybe the coffee is just that potent.
Janice Brown of Cow Hampshire is a collector of Granite State historical oddities, and for this edition of Cabinet of Curiosities she offers up a cautionary tale of the perils of 19th-century self-doctoring in Hanover NH: Death by Sponge in 1851.
"The more I research this old framed piece of embroidery, the more I wish I could "hear" all the stories of the inmates who had a hand in making it. I fear my telling of just this part of the story is only the beginning of some tales unlike any heard before. Everyone says "if walls could talk" but this is a case of wishing that individual threads sewn into a simple cottage scene could tell the story of the individual who stitched the thread into the picture."
"There is a beautiful surfeit of things of brass and wood, and apparently the museum itself is reached through a medieval church with beautiful flying machines (such as the Eole bat-plane...) hanging from intricately carved ceilings. A visual feast; where beauty and science are dramatically entwined, where history smells of varnish, tarnish and soot, and where three-wheeled steam carriages rest proudly next to hand-cranked cinomatographs."
Louis Roderiguez of ...What I Know Now explains the primary function of the Smithsonian to his UK readers as preserving the Junk of the Nation that defines a people. That sounds very much like the function of my house, except it preserves the junk that defines me.
The Museum of Hoaxes shares this Victorian poster for S. Watson's American Museum of Living Curiosities, complete with Australians in what could only be described as their native dress if they were from an alternate universe (click to enlarge).
And then there is the private collection of China's Dr. Liu Dalin, a professor and sociologist at Shanghai University, who is also curator of more than 1,000 objects housed in The Ancient China Sex Culture Museum.
"...if like me, you like to collect things from the natural world, a search for “Coyote Skull” brings back about 91,300 images. Searching for a skull to put into your very own cabinet of curiosity? Searching “Coyote Skull Retail” brings back over 66,000 sites, but you may want to further qualify your search terms. As of my typing this, there are nearly twenty different human x-ray images for sale on eBay (over a dozen of them in eBay Stores). In fact, on eBay, you can find things like crocodile teeth, meteorites, or the disarticulated skeleton of various small mammals. Building your own Wunderkammer is just a PayPal account away...."
Some people use the World Wide Wunderkammer to amass virtual collections of the most remarkable things, like Ethan Persoff's 21 image assortment of paper-based condom envelopes from the 1930s-1940s. If any were made in China, no doubt Dr. Dalin could find a place for them in his Shanghai Museum.
Also at EP.TC, a collection of comics with problems that includes my personal favorite: a 1956/1962 Planned Parenthood comic about birth control called Escape from Fear with the lowbrow lead-in: "Joan and Ken Harper's marriage was on the rocks - because they loved each other!"
Jessica Palmer, whose delicious blog Bioephemera makes her the ideal host for the 6th Edition of CofC in April, shares some of mixed-media artist Ron Pippin's Steampunk creations in this post From the Mad Taxidermist's Attic.
Famous Ankles discovers that the Forbes Magazine Building on 5th Avenue houses Malcolm Forbes' renowned toy collection.
"The first stuff was toy boats. Magnificent, wondrous, perfect toy boats. Hundreds of them. They were exclusively not modern. I didn’t notice anything that looked less than 50 years old. Most looked much older than that. I got the feeling that these were Malcolm’s and, being raised a child of wealth, he got every one he ever wanted (and he wanted a lot of them). They were shown with very few placards, but mostly as if to say: “I got a zillion of these things, here they are in bulk. My collection is the greatest in the world!”
And, by George, it probably is. They were mostly steamship-type boats and they looked like they had a complete life and a wonderful time on small ponds throughout NYC over the years. None of them, at least offhand, looked like a true collector might want them: absolutely pristine and without blemish. Instead, they looked like they had been played with a lot by a boy (or a bunch of boys) with every intention of enjoying them to the max."
L.H. Crawley of The Virtual Dime Museum has just the sort of post that I had in mind when I launched this carnival. She proudly displays samples from her Cabinet of Curiosities: Yellowstone Park Stickers, circa 1940, part of a collection of sixty souvenir stickers brought back by her grandparents who made a trip there from New York by train.
"The Dom Museum’s Kunst und Wunderkammer is the lovingly recreated and restored collection once belonging to the villainous Archbishop Wolf Dietrich. Wolf Dietrich held the title of Archbishop from 1587-1612, and it was he who tore down the original Salzburg Cathedral after it was ravaged by fire, and had it rebuilt in baroque style. Today the magnificent Cathedral is the centerpiece of Mozart’s hometown (and the site of the troubled composer’s baptism). But in the late 1500s, the archbishop’s decision to tear down the damaged cathedral enraged the citizens of Salzburg. He showed complete disregard for valuable sculptures and gravestones, destroying them all. His construction crew didn’t stop at gravestones, as they plowed up the entire cathedral cemetery, unearthing and dumping the bones of the dead atop the debris. The citizens had their revenge years later, when Wolf Dietrich was arrested and imprisoned over salt mining rights; the very salt mines which gave Salzburg its namesake and 16th century riches."
March is when most of the United States springs forward with Daylight Savings Time, so be sure to recalibrate your TDAH-meter and remember that not everything that happens in alternate Steampunk time lines stays in alternate Steampunk time lines...
And that concludes this Steampunk-inspired edition of Cabinet of Curiosities. If you like what you've seen, why not check out the links to previous editions of Cabinet of Curiosities here? Be sure to wind up your rosewood laptops for the April edition, hosted by Jessica Palmer of Bioephemera. Get out your collection of mechanical mice, dust off your rattle bags and submit your entries for the 6th Cabinet of Curiosities directly to Jennifer at cicada AT bioephemera DOT com or via the handy pneumatic submission form. Let me know if you'd like to take a future edition out for a spin and I'll make sure there's plenty of coal in the hopper.
And if you need any more convincing that Alexander Graham Bell was ever so Steampunk, just crank up your graham-o-phone and sing along with RT...
"...Graham Bell, Alexander, It is tantamount to slander To call him just a scientist Why his inventions top the list Edison, he was a thief And Tesla nuts beyond belief But Alexander was a gent So philanthropic, so well meant
Founded Science Magazine Wrote a book for kids Because he was a caring fellow Gave a hand to Helen Keller Of course there was the telephone He’d be famous for that alone But there’s 50 other things as well From Alexander Graham Bell..."
The discussion thread is as fascinating as the map itself. One reader observes that "the notes South of the Cape of Good Hope... sound like winds, blowing strongly where the oceans meet."
"Mr. Plakovic does appear to have harmonized the various voices. The resulting music if played appropriately by an orchestra would no doubt be busy, but it’s unfair to suggest that it is not properly harmonic. (It opens on a strong C major chord, an F maj7 appears in the middle of Russia and China, repeated around the Great Lakes, etc.) The vertical bars, aside from roughly representing meridians, are essential in written music, and thus are quite appropriate visually and musically. Cheers to Mr. Plakovic for the extra effort that makes this something quite clever rather than a mere novelty."
Another observes; "It’s visual art. The artist writes that he is “not very knowledgeable about music theory.” The audio files on his site are not in any way realizations of the notation they’re sitting next to."
Not that that kept yet one more reader from reproducing the music as an eSnip Mp3. Be patient with the download and hear for yourself. The ending may seem abrupt, but remember that the score is in map notation, Mercator projection, no less. It should ideally be played in a continuous loop, like the revolving sphere it represents.
"Sumer is icumen in" at 23:59 this evening, to be precise. Still, I rather doubt that any of the 8 North American members of the Cuckoo family will be heard singing outside my window on the Solstice, lhude or otherwise. However, if I were in the desert southwest - and a bit gullible - I might hope to hear one of them go "Beep Beep!" Yes, the family Cuculidae includes cuckoos, roadrunners and anis. 
