Walking the Berkshires

Family Archive Caption Contest #5

Back, if not by popular acclaim, then by personal interest, the 5th Walking the Berkshires Family Archive Caption Contest, in which you are invited to submit your wittiest prose to accompany something droll and sepia toned from my ancestral files.  Today's item comes courtesy of a 2nd cousin, though not one you have met here before, and that's all I have to say about it until you've done your worst and given this your best shot.  Credit where credit is due upon announcing the winner.

Gentle readers, I beseech you, caption this!

A Pub Crawl through History with Uncle Archie (1966)

It is possible that this commemorative whiskey label was once affixed to a bottle belonging to my great grandfather Archibald Gracie Ogden Sr.  I doubt this, however, as he died during Prohibition and while enforced temperance does not appear to have affected the drinking habits of this decidedly "wet" family, it does argue against thumbing one's nose at the authorities to this extent.  I am far more confident that the "Archie Ogden" brand of Fine Blended Whiskey refers to my Great Uncle Archie Ogden, whose life and letters were recently the subject of a four-part series of posts here at Walking the Berkshires (I, II, III & IV).  As I recently discovered this well preserved label in our family archive, and just received my own copy of Archie's 1966 guide London For Everyone - with a whole section devoted to Pub Crawls - it seems these posts require a coda.

I should say at the outset that it would have been much better if before attempting this post, one of my valued readers with deeper pockets than mine had been able to fly me off to London to do the field research necessary for an exclusive look at the Pubs of Archie's day and see how they -and their wares -have changed in the last 40 years.  My sole trip to London was on a singing tour with my high school choir in 1985, and while I did manage to sample some of Britain's best bitter along the way - I was barely 17, after all - I was unable to make as thorough a reconnaissance of the pubs of London as I would have preferred.  Nor, alas, was my great uncle still living to spirit me away from chaperones and cathedrals and tackle the Sloane Square Pub Crawl, the Belgravia Pub Crawl, or even the East End Pub Crawl - by car - , that he describes in such delightful detail in his book. Here is a taste of what those pages contain.

Two blocks down on a left-hand corner is another interesting pub, the John Snow, named after a famous doctor...He was the first to conclude that cholera was carried by water polluted by sewerage.  When, in 1854, 200 persons died of this dread disease in Soho, he discovered that they all got their water from a pump only a few yards away from the present pub.  With the usual amount of difficulty of the presenter of an original thought, he finally persuaded the Board of Guardians to remove the handle of the pump and thereby signaled the end of the epidemic and, in fact, the end of cholera in this country.  For some reason, at the John Snow I always prefer a half pint of bitter to a whiskey and water (pg 160)."

"The Cockney Pride, 6 Jermyn Street, S.W.1. The word 'Cockney' is allegedly derived from 'cock's egg', i.e., a small egg with no yolk, and was a term of derision by farming folk for foolish town dwellers who didn't understand country ways.  There is nothing foolish about the townsmen who flock into the Cockney Pride.  Opened late in 1965, this has become a very popular oasis both at noon and in the evenings.  Complete with a My Fair Lady flower girl in the vestibule.  Bowler-hatted bartenders in colorful Victorian waistcoats and barmaids in straw "boaters" or gray derbies add to the supposedly Cockney touch and eight pence to every double drink; but it is a very pleasant tourist trap, well frequented, however, by neighboring natives (pg. 167)."

"The Black Lion is the only pub that I have visited that has its own original skittles alley, housed by itself in a corner of the patio.  A.P. Herbert was for many years  captain of the local team.  It's a backbreaking game of ninepins.  The bowls are tremendously heavy, each shaped like a huge discus, and to be authentic must be hand carved, as are the pins (pg. 161)."

"The Town of Ramsgate.  Another sixteenth-century pub, the present building was erected soon after 1700.  There is an old post in the river behind it to which pirates were lashed at one time until they were drowned by the rising tide.  This is said to be true also of the rings  in the wall of The Prospect, which you can see see at low tide...Read the framed manuscript on the saloon-bar wall.  You will learn that the inn was originally called the Red Cow.  The fishermen from Ramsgate, Kent, regularly came up the river to sell their fish in the London market.  Playing on local chauvinism, the then owner changed the name to attract their custom, which, according to the script, 'he succeeded in doing.' 

It was here that the notorious 'hanging judge' Jeffreys was captured in 1688.  After James II had fled at the end of the Glorious Revolution (also known as the Bloodless Revolution), the Judge who was his henchman considered it prudent to visit the continent itself.  He boarded a German vessel, disguised as a common sailor, but the lure of drink proved his undoing.  He slipped ashore to visit the Town of Ramsgate, where he was recognized and almost lynched.  He was rescued from the mob by soldiers from the Tower, and there he eventually died 'of a wasting disease.'  There must be a moral in this little tale.  Strangely enough the Judge's body is now, or will be shortly, interred in Fulton, Missouri.  It was here that Winston Churchill made his famous 'Iron Curtain' speech and as a memorial to him the blitzed Wren church of St. Mary the Virgin is being rebuilt in Fulton.  In a vault under the east end of the church lies Judge Jeffreys.  His is the only tomb to go along with the remains of the church (pg. 152)."

With stories like these, there is hardly time to mention the porter and provender, but knowing Uncle Archie he would have availed himself of both - in plenty - and as one who appreciated an inexpensive glass and a pretty face one imagines that the contemporary attractions of these pubs were as appealing as their marvelous histories. 

If you are in London, and cannot find an out-of-print copy of Archibald G. Ogden's London for Everyone (1966); you can still visit the John Snow,  the Cockney Pride, The Black Lion (still with its narrow skittles alley but alas, no longer in use) and Town of Ramsgate.  One of these days, I shall surely walk in Archie's footsteps and drink in something of the atmosphere he so lovingly details.

Alliaria Alarm

Whenever I give a talk on invasive species, at some point in my presentation I borrow a page from modern childrearing theory and say; "Species are neither good nor bad.  It's their behaviors that we judge as inappropriate."  Most of the time, I even mean this. Right or wrong, though, it's hard for me to consider this plant anything but terrible.  I hate garlic mustard.

Alliaria petiolata is a phenomenally successful invader in the eastern United States.  The Invasive Plant Atlas of New England notes:

"(Garlic mustard) is native to Europe, where it can be found from England to the Czech and Slovak Republics, Sweden, Germany and south to Italy. It has also been reported from Canada. In the United States it can be found from Maine to South Carolina, West to Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Washington and Oregon. It has been reported from all New England States."

It's been in this country since 1868 and when I look out at our moist woodlands today, where the spring  ephemerals are just starting to rise up through the leaves, more often than not all I can see is a solid blanket of garlic mustard rosettes.  Just 1-2% infestation of garlic mustard causes other species to drop out of a natural habitat.  The seeds (30,000 per plant), are very light and can be moved by agricultural equipment, road graders, bark mulch, and on the legs of deer.  The seeds remain viable for at least five years, so unless you get to the plants during their first year, you are in for a long pull.  They also keep invading my flowerbeds from my neighbor's infested yards.  They are aleopathic, exuding toxins in the soil to out compete other species (as Sissy Willis noted in this excellent post during garlic mustard season last year.)

It's a miserable plant, even though the white flowers on those long stalks can look pretty, I guess, to the untutored eye, and the greens are theoretically edible.  Do yourself a great favor and do not let this get established anywhere you care about.  It cannot be reformed.

Some of my enlightened horticultural industry emphasize "the right plant in the right place."  The place for Garlic Mustard, outside of its native range at least, is inside a heavy duty garbage bag.  It will just resprout on your compost pile.

Elephants in the Room

Conflict avoidance is a time-honored survival strategy for many sentient beings.  Particularly in times of resource scarcity, when the law of tooth and claw could mean extinction for both predator and prey, natural enemies will often share the same waterhole.  Families with volatile issues just beneath the surface will choose to work around them rather than risk an explosive confrontation. 

Sometimes, the strategy works.  Sometimes it is nothing more than appeasement or enabling.  And sometimes we flirt with the very edge of disaster, stepping within the comfortable boundary between that big elephant in the room and our own safety.  One hopes that the photographer of this desert-adapted elephant in Namibia was using a telephoto lens.  I've been closer to a bull elephant than this and it was traumatic for both of us.  Luckily, he and I chose the route of avoidance.  The other option would have resulted in our mutually assured destruction, for the authorities would have tracked him down and killed him for stamping the life out of a foolish white American in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Whether conflict avoidance delays an inevitable confrontation or allows for prolonged and wary coexistence is an open question. Many of us choose silence or inaction rather than risk a personally threatening outcome.  Families do not plan ahead to preserve their land and end up losing themselves as well as their real estate when the crisis moment comes.  Water works its way past the unaddressed flaws in the levee until it ruptures in catastrophic flood.  And voices remain unheard for fear of retaliation.

And what of sacrifice?  There are times in nature when the life of the mother is more valuable than the life of the child, but there are also times when the urge to protect one's offspring is greater than the urge for self-preservation.  I know that I have felt moments when I was fully ready to sacrifice my life for my children, despite my fear of oblivion and lack of faith in any hereafter.  I have not felt the same call to sacrifice my life for my country.

There are those who let no injustice stand, no matter how slight.  There are others who seek to avoid conflict at all costs.  Readers of this blog know that I seek a middle ground.  I am not interested in slamming people, although I have a low tolerance for bullies, wastrels and callousness.  I am not particularly interested in exposing hypocrisy, though I see it everywhere.  I have an oddball, wry sense of humor and an attraction to fire, but not a death wish.  I am interested in living a life that is honorable, that takes appropriate risks and principled stands.  And that is the point at which I balance and where you find me here today. 

I like finding solutions.  I understand politics and personalities and try not to exploit that knowledge unjustly, though sometimes to my great discredit I do.  I am often uneasy turning over rocks to see what may be buried beneath, but just as often find myself doing just that.  I won't show you everything.  And I don't always name the elephants in the room.

My Dad speaks truth to power on a daily basis, putting his convictions about peace and social justice up front and personally in a way that I admire and yet do not try to emulate.  Dad has been vigilling in front of the old town hall in his town since before the war in Iraq began and the stories he has to tell about this kind of peacemaking and the encounters he has with passersby are unlike anything else you will hear about this moment in our nation's history.  This stuff is personal for each of us, and sometimes making ourselves vulnerable changes hearts and minds.  Sometimes all it leaves us is martyrdom.  I am at a different place personally and in some ways politically at this stage in my life than my father, but his dedication, commitment, and willingness to stand up for his beliefs are palpable and I honor him for that even though I choose not to stand there with him.

The risks we take should be considered ones made in a timely fashion.  The commitments we make should be based on sound judgment and a willingness to adapt our approach in light of new information.  This is not always the case, but it is the right standard by which to steer.

Natural Selections: The Evolution of the TNC Logo

I visited the web site of The Nature Conservancy recently and found a surprise.  The corporate logo of this giant among conservation organizations has received a new makeover.  You can see the evolution from the previous logo to the new one side by side at this link on TNC's website.  Since the 1980s TNC's logo has changed several times, with each incarnation the result of deliberate efforts to grow the brand and reflecting changes in the scale and scope of TNC's conservation activity and its increasingly global aspirations. 

In the interests of full disclosure and lest anyone get the wrong idea, I was an employee of TNC for 7 years and wish the organization well.  My depiction of TNC's corporate logos in this blog post are intended as fair use illustrations of the changes in their design only and not to represent the organization in any particular light.

The mission of The Nature Conservancy is "to preserve the plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive."  Keep that in mind as you watch the evolution of TNC's logo over the past 25 years.

TNC's corporate logo has long featured an oak leaf motif.  It was originally the leaf of a white oak.  Here is an image taken from the sticker on the rear window of my 13-year-old pick up truck.  There is nothing flashy about this design.  It is understated and somewhat utilitarian.  When this logo was in use TNC had fewer than 100 employees and did not yet have offices in each of the 50 United States.

In the 1990s, TNC went through a dramatic transformation, scaling up from a company of several hundred  people to one with 3,000 employees and an international program that focused heavily on Latin America and the Caribbean, and to a lesser degree in parts of Asia and the Pacific Rim.  TNC launched an organization-wide capital campaign marketed around "Saving the Last Great Places" during this period, and it is still a phrase that resonates.

This logo is a professional looking product, with the oak leaf shifting from a backdrop for the company name to more of an accent.  The script has an italic font, and the successful tag line "Saving the Last Great Places is now incorporated into the logo.  This is the logo that was in use when I joined TNC, but it was soon to be replaced as the organization once again transformed, shifting its emphasis to truly conserving "the diversity of life on Earth" as called for in its mission statement.

The next version of the logo was adopted in 2000.  It kept the unique italic font, making it slightly bolder, but moved the oak leaf to the back as a negative image against a nearly complete circle that is a slightly brighter green than the old leaf had been.  The white oak leaf is now indeed "white". To reflect the global nature of TNC's conservation vision, the words "on Earth" were added to the tag line "Saving the Last Great Places."  TNC's corporate headquarters in Arlington, VA became its "worldwide office", and it stepped up its efforts at marketing its brand.  The capital campaign which the organization undertook during this period netted $1 billion dollars.  I left TNC when this logo was still in use.

Today's new logo is a further refinement of the elements present in earlier iterations.   The font is no longer italicized and "Nature" is larger than "Conservancy", which in turn is larger than "The".  The circle is now a sphere, with three stylized oak leaves wrapped around it.  To me they resemble continents on a globe - two are actually connected where the Isthmus of Panama would join the land masses South and North America.  But my kids think it looks like a soccer ball, which after all is the global sport.  The other significant change - besides yet a third shade of green - is the tag line "Protecting nature.  Preserving life."  There are echos here from TNC's mission language: "protecting...preserve...life."  Those of us who work in conservation know that "biodiversity conservation" does not poll as well as preserving air and water quality or natural places for people to enjoy. 

Whether a new brand identity that appears to position the organization as "the Earth's life preserver" will serve The Nature Conservancy as well as its previous corporate logos is a matter for them and their constituents to determine, but it is interesting to watch this evolution and try to read the signs in the oak leaves.

A Burning Issue: What Not To Do in Public in the Land of Kama Sutra

Actor Richard Gere has been formally charged with committing an obscene act in public when he kissed Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty three times on the cheek at an AIDS awareness event.

I am not making this up. 

According to the BBC;

"Photographs of the clinch were splashed across front pages of newspapers in India.

Public displays of affection are still largely taboo in India, and protesters in Mumbai (Bombay) set fire to effigies of Gere following the incident."

Now admittedly, this is a rather painful image.  One can almost hear Mr. Gere's vertibrae cracking under the strain and Ms. Shetty appears to be drowning in his embrace.  But still, as PDA goes this is pretty tame stuff, at least outside of India.  Remember, this is a country where tradition and modernity are in dynamic tension, where in 1996 Indian Police reported over 2,500 cases of bride burning, and where long ago a celibate scholar wrote the definitive book on love: the Kama Sutra.  Of course, one didn't attempt some of its more challenging positions on stage and in public but as part of the romantic duty of married couples under the caste system and the practice of Dharma.   Sex as a means toward enlightenment is a fundamental part of the Tantric tradition.  I suppose by this standard the Gere grapple might appear coarse and unseemly.    Plus, darn it, he's a foreigner.  They never know their place or how to behave.

The Buddhist Bad Boy now faces a fine and/or three months imprisonment if convicted. 

A Tale of Two Forts, and Finding Another Confederate in the Family

One of the happiest surprises of my recent birthday was the gift of a hardbound copy of The Genealogy of the Olmstead Family in America (1912).  As the keeper of an extensive family archive that includes more than 160 years of Olmste(a)d primary source material, the lack of this volume was one of the few deficiencies in an otherwise superb family record.  There are many letters in my files from ancestors who maintained long correspondences with the author of this genealogy, and I was quite curious to see whether certain controversies - like whether my ancestor Moss Olmsted was born before or after his parents' marriage - were resolved (it was not).  There was additional information about certain collateral relations I did not know and that I likewise took great delight in discovering.

And then there was the close relationship, heretofore unsuspected, with another Confederate in an otherwise staunch Yankee pedigree. Our branch of the Olmste(a)d tree dropped the "a" from the surname while his retained it, but they were both originally of Puritan, northern stock.

The officer above is Col. Charles Hart Olmstead, who turns out to be a second cousin, 5 times removed.  Not as close a relationship as the previously celebrated "gray" sheep in our flock, my Gr-gr-great Uncle Brigadier General Archibald Gracie, but the same relationship back then to my direct ancestor, his second cousin Edward Olmsted of Philadelphia (whose son Pvt William Nisbet Olmsted served on the Northern side with the 7th NYSM), as mine is today to Walking The Berkshires commenters and erstwhile bloggers Tigerhawk, Charlottesvillain and Biotunes.  Unlike Gracie, however, who was a native of New Jersey, Charles Hart Olmstead was a 2nd generation Georgian at the time of the Civil War.  His grandfather Samuel was the son of Samuel Olmsted and Abiah Smith of Ridgefield, Connecticut, and Samuel's younger brother was my ancestor Ebenezer Olmsted. 

The children of both of these brothers scattered far and wide after the American Revolution, as I have previously written here.  Jonathan Olmstead (1793-1854) married Eliza Hart of Savannah, Georgia and settled there.  Their son Charles Hart Olmstead was born April 2nd, 1837.  He graduated from the Georgia Military Institute in 1856 and at the outbreak of hostilities was first a Major, then Lieutenant Colonel in the 1st Volunteer Regiment of Georgia, organized prior to the war and composed of the militia companies of Savannah.  A bewildering array of military units had the designation of "1st Georgia", as this link helps to clarify.  Olmstead was elected Colonel of the regiment in December, 1861, and fought in the unit throughout the war.

His service was notable for two engagements, both involving fortifications.  He was placed in command of Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah River, which the regiment had first occupied on the Governor's orders on January 3, 1861.The garrison consisted of 385 officers and men.  The fort had been constructed over 18 years and at the cost of $1 million dollars, and was completed in 1847.  The fort was thought to be protected from smooth bore artillery by 1000 yards of swampland, well beyond the range of the standard siege artillery and mortars of the time.  General Lee himself, dispatched by Jefferson Davis to organize the coastal defenses in the fall of 1861, reportedly told Col. Olmstead:

"Colonel, they will make it pretty warm for you here with shells, but they cannot breach your walls at that distance."

Union forces soon invested Fort Pulaski, and unknown to Confederate strategists they had a secret weapon.  The siege artillery included newly developed rifled cannon capable of reaching the fort and battering down its defenses.  On April 10th after refusing an invitation to surrender, Col. Olmstead and the defenders of Fort Pulaski endured a devastating bombardment that would last for 30 hours.  The following day, as projectiles were striking the walls of his powder magazine, Col. Olmstead surrendered the fort.  Had he continued to resist and the magazine escaped the threatened explosion, there were 10,000 assault troop massed to take the fort by storm.  It was an honorable decision, and one which lead to his imprisonment for several months before he was exchanged and able to return to his regiment.

The second fortification with which Olmstead was associated was the celebrated battery Wagner on Morris Island which formed part of the defense of Charleston, South Carolina.  It was this fort against which the first black regiment recruited in the north, the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, made its brave night assault featured in the 1989 movie Glory.  There were actually two assaults made on Wagner in July, 1863, and just before the first of these took place on July 11th, the fort was reinforced by two regiments, including 550 Georgia troops commanded by Col. Charles H. Olmstead.  This attack was repulsed in less than 30 minutes, but the next assault on July 18th was to be far greater. By then Olmstead's troops had themselves been relieved and other confederate troops comprised the garrison when it was bombarded and then subjected to a night assault by northern regiments that included the 54th Massachusetts.

That attack also failed, but the fort was abandoned in September, 1863 after two months of continuous shelling.  Morris Island has since been subject to the erosive forces of wind, waves and littoral drift - processes explained in fascinating detail by David Churbuck in his recent post Living on a Sandbar - and the fort itself is long gone.  The Trust for Public Land announced last winter that it has reached an agreement to purchase the 126-acre island from Ginn Clubs & Resorts and is working with the Charleston community to secure the funds needed to preserve it.  Charleston's Mayor Joseph P. Riley applauds the effort:

"It is a sacred place, a fragile, coastal island, the shape, landscape, and size of which have been altered by the hands of man trying to direct nature and history. The shifting sands of Morris Island reflect the changing times of our history. There, the grounds were consecrated with the blood of brave Americans who wore both the blue and the gray. The struggles that have gone on there should instill in us the challenge to mount one last effort to preserve Morris Island."

Bleeding White: Selling the Herd to Save the Dairy

Massachusetts has fewer than 200 remaining dairy farms, down 75% since the 1980's.  That works out to fewer than two farms for every three towns in the Commonwealth.  Virtually all of these dairy farms are family owned, and the largest of the them all, the Aragi family's Pine Island Farm in Sheffield, just auctioned off more than 1/3 of its herd to forestall foreclosure.  The April 20th auction of 614 prime Holstein heifers netted the Aragi's $767,000, which Louis Aragi says is just enough to pay last year's bills.  Public Radio Station WBUR in Boston covered the story, and has been running excellent series on the State's struggling dairy industry:

"Aragi said he couldn't sleep at night, knowing they owed people money. Milk prices have been low in part because the price of milk is fixed by the price of milk powder contracts out West, where dairy producers locked into long-term low prices with a New Zealand company. It's recently come to light that some dry milk processors under-reported the prices that they were getting, which in turn depressed the price of milk for farmers. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is now investigating."

The WBUR feature reported that "the state's dairy farmers are all dealing with the dual economic pressures of the declining milk prices and the rising costs of feed, fuel, and fertilizer" and noted that "the Commissioner of Agriculture may soon declare an economic emergency in the industry."  The price of feed corn has gone up due to increased demand for ethanol production.  "Massachusetts farmers are getting $1.14 a gallon for their milk. They need $1.55 a gallon to break even."  Things are just as bad in Connecticut.

The Aragi's have owned their farm since 1962.  It lies in the Housatonic floodplain, and contains some of the richest bottom land in Berkshire County, as well as fragments of rare habitats like floodplain forest that were cleared elsewhere long ago for agriculture.  The Sheffield Land Trust has conserved portions of 11 farms with state funding through the Commonwealth's Agricultural Preservation Restriction (APR) Program, which pays farmers for the development rights on their land to maintain the agricultural land base.  Sadly, preserving farmland without finding ways to sustaining farming in our region is a real possibility.

Most of the Aragi's heifers were bought by dairies in Wisconsin, going west to greener pastures in an echo of the last, great farming crisis that struck New England after the Civil War.  At that time, western lands opened up with better soils and linked by rail to eastern cities, and some of the towns in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills lost more than 2/3 of their populations to westward and urban migration.  The mainstay of our region's agriculture at that time was not dairy but sheep, and as the textile industry evolved away from wool and hoof and mouth disease decimated our Merino flocks, the future of farming in these parts looked very bleak indeed.  Dairy was the one farm product where eastern farmers had an advantage over their western counterparts.  Being perishable meant that it needed to be produced closer to eastern consumers, and there were excellent transportation networks and support services to bring the milk to market.  Farms that might have had a dozen head of cattle expanded to several hundred to meet the demand, and for the next 80 years or so dairy was the primary agricultural activity in southern New England and eastern New York.

We are now at another watershed moment in New England agriculture.  The farms that will survive here will be those that are able to diversify their products, adding value and expanding their markets without over-extending farm resources, or that gentrify. The final farm product, as many agricultural families know too well, is houses.

Ramps

Beneath the last crusts of snow, ramps were already pushing up through the dark soil.  Native to our moist woods and forested fens, the wild leek (allium tricoccum) is one of the first foods available to Spring foragers and one of my favorites.  This patch is growing in the cool shadow of our neighbor's garage on our side of the property line in our shady wildflower garden, and there are enough of them now to divide a few of those shallot-sized tubers and whip up a wild leek chutney, or a chestnut leek stuffing for butterflied pork, or an omelet filling with next month's morels.  The leaves are just as edible, and delicious in a salad of spring greens or diced as a topping for corn chowder or baked potato. I tell you, friend, ramps are nature's way of replenishing body and soul after winter's famine.  The get the juices flowing.

Never mind that the odor of ramps' breathe would give raw garlic a run for its money, or that it lingers long after the feast is through.  Ramp festivals or "Stink Fests" are popular throughout the eastern states, particularly along the spine of the Appalachians where ramps grow wild in great drifts below the newly greening trees.  Ramps have long been used medicinally to treat bee stings, as a digestive and as a Spring tonic. There are even claims that "two people who eat leeks together will fall in love. It is said to protect against evil and the biting of leeks breaks hexes."  Which would explain why my dear wife has stayed with me all these years, though I am more partial to ramps than she.  Keeps the skeeters away, too.

The leaves are ephemeral but are soon replaced by an umbral of flowers.  They are a market ready wild food and can be harvested sustainably by division of the bulbs.  I have scattered their seeds and established new patches, though they take several years to mature.  In Vermont they know them by the Abenaki name "Winooski", but to those in the know around here, they are the first of many wild pleasures to be enjoyed before the snows of winter settle in once more.

The Newest Oldest Covered Bridge in Massachusetts

There's something about old New England post and beam construction that can turn a ordinary barn into a soaring cathedral, transforming a functional structure like a covered bridge into an almost holy place that fires the imagination.  This is a view from inside the newest covered bridge in Massachusetts, spanning the Housatonic where the oldest had stood 140 years until a real fire in 1994.  Selectman Thomas Leigh was quoted at the time in the Boston Globe as saying: ''All that's left of Sheffield's most historic spot is a pile of charred rubble at the bottom of the river.''   Three local teenagers where subsequently charged with arson.

The original bridge had undergone substantial restoration in the early 1980s, having for many years been an idyllic ruin astride the flat, coiling river.  Covered bridges are not unique to New England but they had an early start here.  The popular lattice truss design that made it possible for a local carpenter's gang to erect a bridge without outside expertise was patented by Ithiel Town of New Haven, Connecticut in 1820.  A 1959 article in American Heritage explains:

"(The) Town lattice truss” bridge (was) an all wood arrangement of planks crisscrossed like a garden fence and pinned together with big two-inch wooden pegs. Weight placed on it only tightened its framework"

New Englanders took the design with them as they spread out across the country in the 1800s (although  Town was entitled to $1 as patent holder for every bridge that used the lattice truss method).  The Sheffield Bridge was constructed in this manner, and perhaps Town did get his fee because he was known to send agents out looking for bridges that used his design and New Haven was not all that far away, and even closer by rail which was by then linking more and more of the country.

After the fire, the Town of Sheffield sought outside assistance with rebuilding its famous landmark.  Northern New England craftsmen set about recreating the bridge at the same site using the same design, and in 1999 the bridge was complete.  It rests today on the foundations of its predecessor, stone abutments quarried from the same site in Sheffield as some of the marble used in the Washington Monument.  The bridge no longer accommodates vehicular traffic, but is a lovely spot to watch the water swirling downstream or to launch a canoe into the swift current.  The sign out by busy Rte 7 at first directed passers by to see the oldest covered bridge in the State, but truth in advertising won out and now it merely claims to point the way to Sheffield's covered bridge, which I like to call the oldest newest covered bridge in Massachusetts.

Today the sun was warm and the river had pulled back within its banks after the floods at the beginning of the week.  I watched the eddies and smelled the dry timbers.  Old or young, the bridge was just right where it belonged.