Walking the Berkshires

Green-Eyed Witch

The winking LED lights on top of the black computer armoire in the living room at home have inspired my children to call it the "Green-eyed Witch".  They look especially spooky when the the room is shrouded in darkness, but nothing compares to my baleful expression when they are lifeless and dead.  For the Green-eyed Witch is in reality my DSL modem and wireless router, and at about 12:30 a.m. this morning they winked out and nothing a very polite customer service representative with a delightful south Asian accent could do over the phone could breathe new life into those little black boxes. 

I am told a replacement modem will be on the way in 3-5 business days, which means that our household for the next few days will have lots of reading going on after hours but precious little e-mail or blogging.  I'll post what I can during breaks in the work week, and look for the return of the Green-eyed Witch sometime next week.

"Thou waitest late, and com'st alone"

I had a day out on the land - an increasingly rare event during the work week as I become progressively more executive and therefore bound to desks and meetings. I made the time to volunteer with a bunch of high school students clearing trails and removing invasive species along our local greenway.  There was ample opportunity during the course of the day to experience what is refreshing and what is exasperating about the adolescent mindset. It was a good group of kids, all told, and time well spent.

We ended up spending most of our time uprooting invasive plants. The sweet soils of Canaan's valleys are overloaded with introduced exotics.  In one small trail section we confronted masses of shrubby honeysuckles - those promiscuous Asian species that hybridize with abandon and whose only serious competition comes from other invasives, among them Japanese barberry, winged euonymous, glossy buckthorn and Asiatic bittersweet. All of these plants can tolerate shaded conditions, and in tern out compete the native flora that might otherwise have flourished.

We did, however, have the treat of seeing one of our region's autumn glories. Greater fringed gentian is considered rare and endangered in a number of states throughout its historic range and has an affinity for limestone soils in meadows or wet woods. Such conditions abound in this corner of Connecticut, though the gentian that grow in the field beyond our house can be gone for years at at time before reappearing in some other part of the meadow.  Berkshire poet William Cullen Bryant penned this homage to the fringed gentian, that last blue glory of the fading year, when all around is yellow and sere. 

"Thou waitest late, and com'st alone
  When woods are bare and birds have flown,
  And frosts and shortening days portend
  The aged year is near his end.
  "Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
  Look through its fringes to the sky,
  Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall
  A flower from its cerulean wall."

There were scores of fringed gentians in the glades and seeps along the trail, as good a reminder as any of what what all this effort to knock back the weeds is all about.

Whirl, Dervish, Whirl

I like my roots plugged in.  Bob Dylan was more than welcome to rock out at Newport as far as I am concerned.  Fairport Convention inspired a host of electric folk musicians.  Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones dug deep in the Blues.

And the stuff coming out of Mali from musicians such as Vieux Farka Toure - son of the late, great Ali Farka Toure - and the electrified Touareg jams laid down by Tinariwen makes me want to talk a long, slow boat up the Niger and learn to race camels.  Poetry in motion. 

Free Men of Color

A long overdue effort to remember and commemorate the men who served in the 29th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry Regiment (colored) during the Civil War made the papers last week.  The Litchfield County Times ran a lengthy piece, describing the service and sacrifice of more than 80 free men of color in this regiment who enlisted from northwest Connecticut towns, which then as now had a very small population of non-white residents. 

"Some of the Litchfield County towns and families of black soldiers were hard-hit by the war, suffering the deaths of more than one soldier. Canaan, for instance, sent four men to the 29th and only one returned alive. Of those, Lynn Royce died before he ever left the New Haven encampment, succumbing on Jan. 1, 1864, while James Royce, died eight months later in Beaufort, S.C.  In Colebrook, six black men marched off to war and four failed to return. Elias and Samuel Hickok died five months apart while serving in the South."

Just beyond my office in Cornwall bridge is the rural Calhoun Cemetery, with stones dating from before the Revolution.  Yesterday I walked through the graveyard and found a marker for at least one man who had served in the 29th CT.  Josiah Starr enlisted as a private in Company C. and mustered out with a sergeant's stripes.  His stone is beside another from the Starr family that also bears a flag, but i could not find a record of service for what looks to be Abel C Starr in the Civil War soldiers and sailors database maintained by the National Park Service.  Four men with the surname "Starr" served in the 29th. 

These men were not the only black veterans from Cornwall whose markers I found, however.  Connecticut initially set out to raise 2 colored regiments, but by June, 1864 the four companies of the 30th Connecticut C.V.I. were dispatched to Virginia and combined with other companies to form the 31st U.S. Colored infantry.  David Hector enlisted in Company D. According to his gravestone he died in 1881 at the age of 76, making him an old man (for the time) during his term of service.  The 31st U.S.C. Infantry served with distinction and were part of the terrible assault on the Crater in the trenches at Petersburg.  At the Crater, CT members of the 31st lost 17 k, 44 w, 14 missing and 4 captured.  During its term of service, the regiment lost 3 officers and 48 enlisted men killed and mortally wounded and 1 officer and 123 enlisted men by disease. 

In another part of the Calhoun Cemetery is the stone of Charles S Western, who served with the 11th Regiment U.S. Heavy Artillery (colored) in the garrison of New Orleans.  It was organized from the 14th Rhode Island Heavy Artillery (colored), and somewhere along the line Charles Western enlisted.

In all there are 12 veterans of the Civil War whose stones I was able to find in the Calhoun Cemetery, and  1/3 of them were those of colored veterans.  Of the rest, one had toppled face forward but was in the Sawyer plot and had a foot stone with the initials L.S., leading me to believe it marks the resting place of Lewis Sawyer.  Like many other white Cornwellians (and 6 veterans altogether whose remains lie in this cemetery), Sawyer served in the 19th Connecticut Infantry - "The Litchfield Regiment" - which was later designated the 2nd CT Heavy Artillery.  Elsewhere in the graveyard I found other members of his company who did not survive the war, including Herman E Bonney who died in Philadelphia on June 28th, 1864 and another who died in Washington on July 19th, 1864.  A third, George W Page, was killed at Ceder Creek on October 19th, 1864 and Sgt. Albert E Robinson died in Baltimore on March 26, 1865.   

The impact of these losses on rural Connecticut communities was deeply felt, but what of the small African American communities within them?  How did it affect the few black families in Colebrook when 2/3 of the men who served in the 29th CT from that town failed to return?

The four veterans of colored regiments buried in the Calhoun cemetery lie in scattered graves that form a line about halfway across the middle of the graveyard.  In the 1800s, this marked the back line of the cemetery.  Set apart even in death, their comrades rest in the corners of dozens of burying grounds across the Litchfield Hills.

Name That Officer

Here's a fresh challenge for all you military history buffs out there.  Please name the officer and in whose service he wears this festive uniform. 

And no, he was not a Shriner.

Unfriendly Fire

The Confederate Brigadier in the northern branches of our family tree is a fascinating anomaly.  Oral tradition held that General Archibald Gracie, the third in four successive generations to bear that name, had his head blown off by a cannon ball at Petersburg.  Contemporary newspaper accounts in our family archive variously describe the agent of his destruction as shell fragments and even a sniper's bullet, but thanks to a niche area of Civil War studies and a book by Jack D. Welsh detailing the The Medical Histories of Confederate Generals, I believe I can now say with certainty that he kept his head but was done in by artillery fire.

"He was killed December 2, 1864, in the Petersburg trenches by the explosion of a Parrott shell.  He was looking through a telescope at the time, the top of his head exposed.  His neck was fractured, and he was struck three times in the shoulder."

Welsh also provides more information about a wound General Gracie received in 1863.

"On December 14th, 1863, near Bean's Station, Tennessee, his left arm was struck by a rifle ball; that same day, after having it examined, he returned to the field.  The surgeon could detect no lesion of the bones.  Later examination revealed that the musket ball had struck his forearm posteriorly two inches below the elbow, passing deeply and transversely through the deep flexors, and had come out before the radius.  Twenty days after the injury, the limb was markedly swollen, and the little and ring fingers wee paralyzed.  Abscesses formed, and at the end of six weeks, two exfoliations were removed.  Rapid recovery followed.  Gracie rejoined his brigade in April 1864, while it was located in the vicinity of Lick Creek (Virginia)."

Gracie probably convalesced in Richmond, with his wife Josephine Gracie née Mayo.  A child was born to this couple on December 1st, 1864, which was also Gracie's birthday.  He had received leave to go visit his wife and newborn daughter just before he went to inspect the trenches.  He was 32 years old.

"She Gets Too Hungry..."

My son is the omnivore of the brood.  He thinks cheese was made to just to delight him with its variety.  He is willing to try just about anything once.  His big sister, on the other hand, eats like a panda; limited preferences eaten to the exclusion of all other options.  If it weren't for peanut butter, pasta and Cheerios, she would have wasted away long ago.

So just before school started, I had the idea that each month we would pick a country and explore its history, customs and cuisine.  Emily thought that sounded like great fun and suggested we start with Morocco.  I hope she likes couscous.

I'm in a very Oktoberfestive mood, so it will be beer, brats and Bavaria next month.  I think there will be opportunities for both children to enjoy Chinese and Mexican food and they both like satay, but for some of these meals I expect Cheerios will be the fall back position.

What kid friendly-food do you suggest from the world's cuisines?

False Trail

Yesterday I wrote about a police investigation on a property in Morris, Connecticut where the Litchfield Land Trust reportedly has a conservation easement.  We at the Greenprint had no record of such a holding, but even more surprising than that, neither does the Town of Morris.  We have since figured out where the police are looking for the rest of the remains that match those in the bag of bones, and it is not in Morris.  So why was that what the paper reported?  Curious indeed.  Glad it's not my job to unravel it.

Open Space and a Cold Case

When the (now ex-) president of the Litchfield Land Trust was arrested for growing marijuana on land protected by his own conservation organization in northwest Connecticut, it made all the papers.  Now the Land Trust is in the news again, and though not through any fault of its own, the story is even more outrageous.  It also has a bearing on my day job as Director of the Litchfield Hills Greenprint, as the news story alerted us to the existence of land protected by the Land Trust in the nearby town of Morris where we were unaware that the Trust had any protected holdings.

According to this story in the Hartford Courant, the Litchfield Land Trust must have at least one easement in Morris, because the police apparently needed its permission to dismantle a stone wall there looking for the remains of a man who has been missing since 1978.  This cold case got suddenly hot about a year and a half ago, when a man under indictment for possession of more than 100 pounds of marijuana walked into the police station with a bag containing the skeletal remains of a human arm.

"(Kenneth Gelormino Jr.)  told police the bones belonged to Lester "Chip" Stewart, who had been reported missing in January 1980, 16 months after he was last seen in Litchfield County — in September 1978.

Police had long suspected that Stewart was the victim of a drug deal gone bad.

Gelormino, who lived in Torrington, told authorities he got the bones from his father, Kenneth Gelormino Sr. The son said his father, facing a life-threatening disease, told him a gruesome secret: He and another man killed Stewart, burned his body and buried it under a stone wall.

The elder Gelormino had kept the bones as collateral to blackmail his former partner, and he wanted his son to use the bones to continue to extort money from the man, who had since moved to Arizona."

This story reads like something out of a Robert B. Parker novel.  Stewart was a drifter thought to have been be a drug runner between Florida and Connecticut in the 1970s.  DNA tests on the bag of bones show a positive match with its contents.  The current owner of the land purchased it subject to the conservation easement and was not the owner at the time of Stewart's disappearance.  The new President of the Litchfield Land Trust agreed to cooperate with police and to let them dismantle the stone wall, which certainly looks like the proper call.  I am sure it is not the kind of press attention the Trust was looking for, but it is the talk of the town.

Balancing at Scale in a Sea of Trouble

"Who am I"  What is my purpose?"  These are not just matters of personal philosophy or religious creed; they are fundamental to the ultimate success or failure of institutions both large and small.  In times of crisis and uncertainty, losing track of the answers to these questions can bring down the whole house of cards.  You cannot adapt to new opportunities and challenges if you don't know what to retain that is at the very core of your corporate or personal identity and what is non-essential.  You cannot scale up and sustain your efforts at scale unless you know what key qualities of your prior success must be sustained at the new level.  And you cannot spend all your time trying to answer these questions because you will get steamrolled by events and miss the chance altogether.

I have been part of organizations that have tried to go to scale and ended up losing vital parts of their identity, culture and effectiveness.  I have been part of companies that have stuck to one model of doing things long after it became clear that continuing to do so would result in certain failure.  I have been part of coalitions that tried to reinvent themselves without a clear idea of what would appeal to funders, and indeed lost sight of their raison d'etre.  All of us have had similar experiences in our professional lives and personal relationships.  Look no further than Wall Street and the national divorce rate to see that this is so.

Nathaniel Philbrick, author of  "In the Heart of the Sea; The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex, observes that effective ship Captains and 1st Mates posses complimentary but quite distinctive personal qualities and that both are requirements of group survival at the extremes of existence.  One should possess the vision and authority to act decisively on the best available information and make course corrections when conditions require, and the other have the ability to rally the crew, implement the vision, be alert to changes in the wind: essentially play the role of Mother to the Captain's pater familias. The same relationship doubtless exists in the army command structure between the Company Captain and the senior NCO.

If your organization lacks decisive and authoritative strategic thinkers and effective and perceptive implementers (or, God forbid, both), you are unlikely to weather the crisis when it comes.  Getting the proper balance between planning and action, and recognizing that each of us by nature tends to fall on one or the other side of that continuum, is a critical leadership skill.

So pick your institution facing transformational change and new challenges and crises, and ask whether it is clear about its identity and direction and has the right combination of leadership and resilience to make those changes.  Pick your politician or your CEO (or spouse, if you let your head guide your heart) with the same eye.