Walking the Berkshires

"Take a Sad Song and Make it Better"

My wife can't stand cover versions of other people's songs.  She bonds with the original and accepts no substitutes.  I'm like that about some things, but not music.  True, there are plenty of insipid cuts from tribute albums cluttering up CD racks and iPods around the world, and one person's cleverly subversive reinterpretation is another one's rubbish.  I like Dread Zeppelin, but I can understand why others wouldn't.  I like Monty Python, too.  Arrested development, not doubt.

Sometimes, though, an artist's song is truly elevated when some other inspired performer transforms it.  Think what Pete Seeger's "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" gained when embraced and richly harmonized by Peter Paul and Mary - let alone as sung in German by Marlene Dietrich as "Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind?"   Pete gets the royalties, but they made it their own.  And Joni Mitchell's Woodstock clearly hit the big time when CSN&Y laid it down.

You must have good material - although Richard Thompson offers the exception that proves the rule with his impish acoustic version of Britney Spears' Oops I Did It Again.  Thompson's music has been masterfully performed by others - sometimes with the master himself as a sideman on their albums, and he's a big fan of cover music himself.  One of my all-time favorite songs like this is Dave Burland's superb version of The Angels Took My Racehorse Away, a song that premiered on Thompson's debut solo album Henry The Human Fly in 1972, but it takes wings beneath Burland's elegiac delivery and inspired arrangement.

"Well the angels came to see me today
Said "We’ve taken your racehorse away"
And I believe it was that bookmaker from crail
I believe that he put one in her pail
All the finest in the field
Only measured to her shoulders, they only ever see her heels
And I believe (I believe) every sporting man will cry
I believe (I believe) to see his income pass him by

She won the Lanark Silver Bell and she stole every heart away
She stood her stand at sixteen hands and I’d ride her easy
But they’ve taken her away, they’ve taken my racehorse away"

Then there are the songs for which I can't hear enough different versions.  I used to go to a fair number of Grateful Dead shows in my younger days and at one time I had something on the order of 300 bootleg tapes spanning two decades in my collection.  There were certain performances of songs that I preferred over all others, and there was always the possibility at a Dead Show that tonight would be a night like none other, that this would be the legendary version that blew all the rest away. 

Or take Richard Thompson's classic "Shoot Out the Lights", which he has performed in both electric and acoustic versions.  The song has been covered by Bob Mould, Los Lobos - all sorts of folks - and its namesake album by Richard and Linda Thompson is one of the finest records ever made IMHO.  But I adore hearing new takes on it, either by the artist himself or in the capable hands of others.  Folk music has always been that way, even electric folk.  And the old is made new and it moves me all over again.

"There’s a racecourse in the sky
And that’s where all the racing horses must go by and by
And I believe (I believe) every steward, lord and groom,
I believe (I believe) that they’re calling her name

She would look at me in the eyes and that was all she had to say
She stood her stand at sixteen hands and I’d ride her easy
But they’ve taken, they’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away
They’ve taken my racehorse away."

"Every Picture Tells A Story, Don't It?"

At left is my great-great grandmother Alice Jane (Greene) Barker (1852-1914).  Her son, Raymond Barker inherited many of her facial features, and I recognize much of my grandfather Robert Barker in both of these photographs as well (shared here with you courtesy of my 2nd cousin Karen Shaw Knapp).

A curious reference in one of the typewritten family chronologies in my Barker archives mentions that Alice Greene Barker "was a poet of renown and wrote under the name Grace Melbourne."  I have found no examples of her work, and am left with just the acknowledgment that the family recalled her talent and accorded it respect.

They were churchgoing Midwesterners, Methodists of sound moral character.  Jane Greene's family adopted two orphans when she was a girl - Jimmy Green and Charles Wolfley - and after she married Samuel Barker, Jr., the Barker's adopted a girl named Hortense Towsley.  In this same year, their 8 1/2-year-old daughter Alice Glen died.   

The set of her jaw in this photograph conveys something of the stoic, tough-as-nails qualities which carried her through adversities.  But is there also any hint of the poet behind those spectacles, finding voice despite the high collar at her throat?  We are not always what we seem - thank heavens - and there are sides to every personality besides what we get in the full-on view.

"I'm the Phoenix": The Biggest Book Takes on the Biggest Boxstore in a YouTube Classic

Kids nowadays are so hip, I'm getting blogging leads from ten-year-olds.  The daughter of one of my coworkers showed me this on YouTube yesterday.  Take that, Lord Waldemart!

Blowing in the Wind

The Washington Post reports on a proposal under consideration in Delaware to construct an offshore wind energy farm with 200 huge turbines.  This is not the first such proposal for setting up wind generating facilities in America's coastal waters - after all,  steady and reliable winds are a critical requirement of this form of alternative energy production - but none have yet been permitted here.  Apparently the debate in Delaware is not over the need for more electricity production but whether new fossil fuel plants or wind farms should be providing it.    The Post quotes Peter Mandelstam, the President of Bluewater Wind, the New Jersey company proposing the project, as emphasizing the environmental benefits of this technology:

"A third of Delaware will be underwater by 2100," Mandelstam said, citing University of Delaware research. "And we take that very seriously."

Which might, one supposes, be an argument for locating them closer to the existing shoreline, rather than at one of the two locations under consideration farther out to sea.  All kidding aside, there are environmental consequences of wind farms which place conservationists in a particularly uncomfortable bind when it comes to supporting alternative energy projects like this.  On the one hand, we know how important it is to wean ourselves from fossil fuel to meet our energy requirements and reduce the anthropogenic factors influencing global climate change.  On the other hand, we have difficulty embracing specific projects because some of their localized impacts have regional and even global consequences.

I am not going to get into the aesthetic argument, except to say that  from my perspective this is the weakest objection that opponents of wind farms raise and it sets them up for NIMBY accusations.  Some conservation groups favor developing siting criteria with the energy producers that would identify resources of conservation importance and areas with reliable and economically viable wind generating potential and avoid the intersection of these two interests.  In reality, the places with the best winds have plenty of resources of conservation interest, especially flyways for migrating birds.  The concerns about fisheries impacts have been, in my opinion, less convincingly argued, but birds and turbines are a bad mix. 

Delaware Audubon society representatives have said at an energy conservation and alternative energy forum last winter that they believe the turbines could be sited and developed in a way that minimizes the threat they pose to birds:

"Shore birds such as red knots are already endangered, Delaware Audubon Society President Mark Martell said. Still, he and Dover resident Ron Zink of the Delaware Sierra Club said pollution offers a greater threat to birds and the rest of the environment."

The developer has agreed to relocate a potential site from Delaware Bay to one of the two offshore sites because of concerns about birds.

The Oakland Tribune reports that in 15 years, new wind farms could generate up to 7 percent of US electricity.  There are real costs and benefits at multiple scales to consider, but someone has to make a commitment move on renewable energy production and with good monitoring and stakeholder engagement, this proposal may be the one that gets us heading in the right direction.  If approved, the wind farm could come on line as early as 2012.

CWCID: Glenn Reynolds

Riding Out of Town on a Rail: Hartford's Turn of the Century Trolleys

Time was, if you wanted to get around Hartford, Connecticut or out into the surrounding towns, you took the trolley.  This 1901 pamphlet makes it sound as if the streetcar were the only way to travel, and indeed as an improvement over horse and carriage or noisome steam railway it had much to recommend as a means of seeing the sights and made Hartford truly metropolitan for the first time in its history:

"Hartford City Hall is the center of an immense trolley traffic, the lines reaching out in all directions for miles and making many towns practically a part of Hartford which a few years ago were very difficult to access.  About 100 cars pass in front of and around the City Hall every hour.  There is no doubt that the excellent trolley system has done much for Hartford and has been a factor in causing the remarkable growth shown by the last census - from 53,000 in 1890 to nearly 80,000 in 1900."

Conversely, in the last 50 years Hartford has lost 10,000 residents every decade, and getting through and around the City by automobile is often frustrating and complicated.  Two elevated interstates slice through Hartford, and its explosively growing suburbs come at the expense of gridlock and an ever shrinking urban core.  In some ways, the rural communities beyond a reasonable commuting distance of Hartford are just as isolated from the state Capitol today as they were before the advent of trolleys.

In 1901 you could take a trolley directly to any of Hartford's magnificent network of public parks.  You  could ride from Hartford to Springfield, Massachusetts and take a side trip to Mount Tom for 15 cents, there to enjoy views of far away Mounts Monadnock, Greylock or Wachusett from a cafe 1,214 ft above sea level.  It took half a day - via 3 trolley lines and a steam railway to go from Hartford to City Hall in Manhattan, a distance of 143 miles, but this was a vast improvement over a rough carriage and the whole thing cost $1.96 one way.  Intriguingly, the Hartford steamship line took out a full page advertisement in the Trolley pamphlet for a night run to New York - first class - at $1.50.  For shorter journeys, though, the trolley was hard to beat.

Hartford needs far more than good public transportation to get back on its feet today - its education, employment and home ownership figures are truly dismal - but the value of a good, efficient network of mass transit linking suburbs to city and neighborhood to neighborhood was well known to those who took the trolley one hundred years ago and saw their horizons and opportunities expand.  The Connecticut Trolley Museum in East Windsor keeps that heritage alive today with the oldest electric railway museum in the United States.

Granny Get Your Gun: The Results Are In For The Family Archive Caption Contest #5

The jury is in, and among the excellent submissions we received for the 5th Walking the Berkshires Family Archive Caption Contest, Cary Brown's rises to the surface:

"Maude shows the boys how to take care of that lake monster once and for all."

Congratulations, Cary, and if by chance you happen to be my old friend Cary Brown from Edgertown, then we have some serious catching up to do!

The shotgun toting lady with the wasp waist standing resolutely in the bow is my great grandmother Barker as none now living ever knew her.  Alice May Martin was the girl next door who married Ray Barker in 1901, the year after she graduated from High School.    That's Ray standing with the gaff second from the left.  I am not sure, but have a feeling that this picture was taken before their marriage, perhaps in 1898 when the Barkers joined family friends for the summer in Massanoga, Canada.  According to a brief family chronology compiled by Raymond H. Barker Jr., my grandfather's older brother:

"Due to mosquitoes spent my time on a house boat out in the center of lake."

The Martins and the Barkers were second generation Clevelanders, and while upwardly mobile they remembered lean times and kept scrupulous accounts of even the smallest debt or transaction. Ray and Alice Barker bought the cottage on Monhegan Island in Maine and were building a second one even closer to the water when Ray died coming over from the mainland with supplies. Our extended family still enjoys this extraordinary place to this day and this year - for the first time in five long years - my little family will be able to go as well.

My second cousin, Karen Shaw Knapp, who has a deep interest of her own in family genealogy, kindly allowed me to post some of the archival photographs from her collection.   I've never seen my great grandfather with a mustache before, nor Grandma Barker looking anything but white haired and severe, let alone with her hand on the tiller in the Gulf of Maine or staring down the barrel of a shotgun.  The family has a long association with watercraft, from the Great Lakes schooners captained by Alice Martin father John Thomas Martin to the Genevieve, 60 ft long and purchased by the family in 1906 for $3,750.  Those of us weaned on Atlantic water tend to forget the vast inland seas of the American upper Midwest, but the Martins and Barkers knew them well.

 

Days of Pigs

Someone turned loose what look like 8 pot bellied pigs in two different communities in the Litchfield Hills last week.  Three of the pigs, which animal control officers estimate to be 125-150 pounds, have been wandering the area of Romford Rd. in Washington, while 5 more turned up on private property in the Town of Kent.  The Danbury News Times has the story:

'"It took about one week for the word to finally get around town. Now, everywhere I go, that's all I hear, 'How are the pigs doing?' Animal Control Officer Cynthia Brissett said Wednesday.

Brissett, who has been feeding them every day, said she wants to find a safe place, like a special sanctuary, for them. But first she has to catch them.

Five pigs, who Brissett thinks are from the same litter, were also discovered around the same time in Kent, but because they ended up on private property, town officials there aren't taking action like Washington officials are, Brissett said.

The Kent pigs are 'wandering on private property up there,' Brissett said, adding the propety owner, whose name she declined to reveal, feeds them."

Pot bellied pigs are kept by some people as pets but with any exotic animal, having them in the home is a great responsibility and not without complications.  And anyone who has a pair of these animals in the house and does not spay or neuter them is asking for a litter.  Needless to say, whoever abandoned the pigs is as irresponsible and thoughtless as someone who drowns kittens.

The Sad Story of Sabo's

Terry Cowgill, who blogs for the Lakeville Journal Company, has written a gem of a post on the decrepit trailer park cum shantytown known as Sabos that for decades was an anomalous eyesore in an otherwise bucolic landscape in Amenia, New York.  I remember this place well, as I used to pass it on my daily school bus ride in the 1970s when I was growing up in Dutchess County.  Not only people but chickens and chimpanzees survived on the margins at Sabo's. The taint of human and animal misery of this place was in plain view to passersby, hinting at the squalid conditions within, but I understand the reality was far worse than any of us imagined.

The comments to Terry's post are just as thoughtful and illuminate the question of the invisible rural poor of our rapidly gentrifying area.  Most communities in the southern Berkshires have banned mobile homes and rentals are few and far between.  Shabby little eyebrow colonials may have several families crammed within but still appear as quaint parts of our rural landscape.  There are corners and hollows in these hills where the rural poor accumulate, but they just as often live in rooms above storefronts, or in aging Victorians carved up into apartments, or in their vehicles.  Many of us are blind to the conditions they endure. 

There is little or no public transportation in our region.  The mean travel time to work in Litchfield County is 26.2 minutes (roughly the same as my 19 mile drive), while in Dutchess it is 1/2 an hour.  Without a car your are likely without a job.  While the median household income in Litchfield County was $57,691 in 2005, 5.5% of residents live below the poverty level.  In Berkshire County that number is 10.2%.  In Salisbury, Connecticut, a town with soaring property values and second homes for transplanted Manhattanites, 7.8% of the population live below the poverty line.

Sabo's was demolished last winter and will fade from local memory, a shadow of a thought from a forgotten past.  But the poor are always with us, even here in these moneyed hills.

Read the whole post here.

Ephemerrata

I've been indulging in a favorite spring past-time on the way to work, something I like to call drive-by botany.  Even on twisting country roads you have barely a second or two to note a single identifying feature - the form of a leaf, the shape of a tree, a splash of pale white on a blanket of green - before it passes by.  I've gotten really good at picking out spring ephemerals by the roadside and back beneath the  trees at 55 miles per hour, and this is harder to do than it used to be because just about everything else that is leafing out beneath the canopy at this time of year is an invasive species.

So I had to stop the car and stare up in increasing amazement at a hillside covered in Dutchman's  Britches.  I do not exaggerate to say there much have been tens of thousands of these ornate wildflowers, stretching away up the cool, eastern slopes of Sharon Mountain at the entrance to the Housatonic Gorge.  Those gray-green drifts in the foreground are all Dicentra cucullaria, as is everything else in that shade of green heading upslope under the trees.  Dutchman's Britches, so called because they resemble upturned pantaloons, thrive on cool, moist slopes and in conditions where they've been left undisturbed they can become locally abundant.  I've never seen a site before like this, where this species appears to have the greatest share of the biomass.  But looks can be deceiving.

You've probably already spotted the sickly green of Japanese barberry lurking in the shrub layer.  There are some shrub honeysuckles in there too.  But the real threat, the cancer that riddles this site as completely as the Dicentra that still thrives here, is Alliaria petiolata, my old nemesis Garlic mustard.  Every single one of those tiny emergent seedlings in this picture is garlic mustard, which means there's already quite a seed bank here, and it occurs in this density throughout the site.  It is by the roadside, where passing cars, farm equipment and road crews were vectors for its spread.  It is deep in the woods, well established below the ledges, and wherever I found Dicentra, I found plenty of young Alliaria too.

This site had been infested with garlic mustard for a good while.   Management is out of the question.   This is National Park Service land buffering the AT, and while protected from development it is open to invasion and treatment at this stage isn't a realistic option. This moist woodland slope should be filled with spring ephemerals, not only the Dicentra but trillium and bloodroot and indeed I found places like that, but if you click on the image at right - even here - there are garlic mustard seedlings waiting to erupt.

If that hasn't depressed you sufficiently, check out this section of forest a few miles down the road.  Everything you see on the ground that is green is garlic mustard.  I took a walk beneath the trees and here and there I found a native plant.  There was always garlic mustard. Here's a lone trout lily, surrounded by the stuff.  This, too, is protected land, and it is on its way to becoming a biological desert.  Not for everything, mind you.  This is near where I saw the two bears last fall.  But what should be a diverse flora is becoming a monoculture.

Still, I wonder about the Dicentra.  I think I'm looking at a ship that's been holed below the waterline, but maybe it's got a cargo of cork.  The garlic mustard is spread throughout the site but the Dutchman's Britches are still abundant.  There might be an opportunity here for some density plots, to see whether garlic mustard is able to outcompete and ultimately extirpate this native species at this site as it has with so many other plants and other natural communities, or whether the Dicentra can somehow withstand the assault.  I'd like to see what happens later in the summer, when the spring ephemerals have died back and the garlic mustard seedlings no longer compete with them for the filtered sunlight.  I fear I know the answer, but I will stop as I drive by to see.

"Damn Everything But The Circus": Carnivals Aplenty

The Carnival of the Insanities this week offers a cautionary tale of what happens when you accept an offer of free beer on a stolen phone.

Carnivalesque XXVI (the early modern edition) is at Siris this month.  "(T)he links of this Carnivalesque focus on food, on drink, on violence, on sex, on spectacle and pageantry, on the startling and the surprising, on chance and vicissitude, with some other things thrown into the mix."  Just my cup of tea.

From there to the Carnival of Rock 'n Roll is but a small two step, and this premier edition features such penetrating analysis as "Why classic rock, but not classic rap?" and Cello Rock.  Fifth of Beethoven, Fifth of Chivas...

The History Carnival, now a monthly event instead of publishing biweekly, had its 52nd edition at ClioWeb.  It's got pagans, Christians and a whole lot of pole dancing going on.

And finally, the 11th Festival of the Trees is out at Flatbush Gardener, with everything from the suburban forest to the concrete jungle on display for your reading pleasure.