August 2022 - Turning 70; Class Reunion; Pratt & Whitney; Cape Cod

Late Summer Happenings

I turned 70 in July.  I know that a number of you have already crossed that bridge, and I totally agree when people say things like "it's just a number" or "it sure beats the alternative".  Any casual observer of history knows that 70 is a privilege not afforded to too many over the centuries.  So, I have to chuckle a bit when I think back to the lyrics from a Simon & Garfunkel song from the late 1960's:

"Old friends sat on a park bench like bookends...

Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?

How terribly strange to be seventy."

I was probably 15 or 16 when I first heard that song and couldn't imagine being 70, just as I can't imagine just passing my days on a park bench now that I am 70!   

BUT....I had a brief vision of just that future fate on the morning of my birthday.  Out for a hike with my dog Zoey, I absent-mindedly stepped on a small rock, twisting my right ankle and landing with a THUD on my left hip.  Getting up slowly and picking up my glasses and backpack, I did a quick assessment and came to the conclusion (a) thankfully, no one saw me and (b) nothing was broken.  I limped the last half mile back to my car - and continued to limp for the next few weeks, with my ankle in a brace  and a large rainbow-colored bruise on my hip.  It was Mother Nature's warped way of introducing me to the 70's. .   

A few weeks later, another milestone: my 50th high school reunion.  Technically, it was the 52nd reunion - Conard High class of 1970 - delayed by two years due to Covid.  

(Side note here: we were the class of '70, 70 years old, born in '52, our 52nd reunion.  I've been playing with the math to figure that out.  If the class of '71, born in '53, has a 53rd reunion in 2024, they'll all be 71.  Same with the class of '60, born in '42 and 60 years old at their 42nd reunion, etc.   Does that work for every year?)

 Anyway, back to the reunion: we were a class of over 600, but only about 200 were in attendance at the dinner, held at Wampanoag CC in West Hartford.  It was a pleasant event marked by a bunch 70 year-olds that mostly didn't recognize eachother and spent the evening squinting to read each other's name tags.  I attended with my long-term friends Nancy and Barbara, and it proved to be a fun weekend of reminiscing and laughter, including a Sunday morning tour through our old neighborhoods and landmarks in Elmwood.

Selfie in front of our alma mater Talcott Jr High, now part of a condominium complex

Which is what brings me to Pratt & Whitney.  

My friend Barbara has been living in Michigan for the last 25 or 30 years, so I decided to take her through downtown Hartford to see how it's changed.  As we approached the intersection of Main Street and Maple Avenue near the South Green, we started to notice an uptake in motorcycle traffic and saw police lights ahead.  That should have been a signal to turn around, but before we could assess the scene, we were detoured from Wyllis Street onto one-way Congress Street - away from Main.  Observing the abundance of people with balloons and Puerto Rican flags walking by, we realized (confirmed via a quick online search) that we had stumbled into the midst of Hartford's Puerto Rican pride day.  

We weren't going anywhere soon - in fact, for close to an hour.

Now, I know that some folks would just sit and stew in their cars in frustration, but Barbara seemed to share my reaction that this was just a continuation of our weekend's adventure.  Looking around, we slowly came to realize that the street we were on was lined with a collection of (mostly restored) beautiful 19th century Brownstone buildings.  Nothing else to do, Barbara did another online search and found that all of Congress Street is in fact listed in the National Register of Historic Places....

Congress Street in Hartford

.....AND....

Early residents of the street included Francis A. Pratt (1827-1902) and Amos Whitney (1832-1920).   Mr. Pratt was a native of Peru, New York and Mr. Whitney was born in Biddeford, Maine.  Both settled in Hartford in 1852 and likely met while working at Colt Armory.  In 1860, they formed the Pratt & Whitney Company.  More about the company's origins and history HERE.  

Lesson learned: you never know what factoids you may pick up while stranded in traffic!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I'll end with a picture of sunset on Cape Cod last weekend - our first visit there with friends since pre-Covid 2019.

 

July 2022 - Code Talkers

 Navajo Code Talkers

Route 163 in Monument Valley, Utah - One Portion of the Code Talker's Highway

It's been a month since we returned from our four-week RV trip.  Although the primary goal of our trip was the Grand Canyon, we came away with an unexpected and compelling lesson about one aspect of the Native Americans in the region - specifically, the Navajos and their contribution to the success of the Allies in the Pacific theater during World War II.

The Navajo Nation encompasses a large portion of the Four Corners region of the US.  It was here that Chester Nez was born to a family of semi-nomadic Navajo sheepherders in 1921. His story is told in a memoir that I picked up while visiting the Grand Canyon: Code Talker, a book I recommend to just about everyone - especially for those interested in recent Native American history, WWII history, or anyone who has served in the Marines or other Armed Forces.

At the age of eight, along with other native children in the region, Chester was taken from his home and sent to a boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  Obligated to learn English, the students were forbidden to speak their native Navajo tongue or practice their culture while at school.  Nevertheless, Chester continued his education into his late teens, returning home to his family every summer.  .

After Japan invaded Pearl Harbor in 1941, Chester and his best friend Roy Begay felt compelled to join the war effort:

"We, like other Native Americans, had been born to the warrior tradition.  Like other Navajos, we saw ourselves as inseparable from the earth we lived upon.  And as protectors of what is sacred, we were both eager to defend our land."  *

And so, when Marine recruiters arrived in the region in the spring of 1942 seeking young Navajo men who were fluent in both Navajo and English, Chester and Roy enlisted.

Theirs was a special and secret mission.  Up until then, the Marines had been using a standard "Shackle" code in the Pacific: the code was written in English, encoded via machine, sent, received at the other end, decoded, and written down again in English.  The entire process could take an hour or more, and the code was vulnerable to being broken by the Japanese, necessitating repeated changes.

A Marine civil engineer named Philip Johnston, who had spent part of his youth on a Navajo Reservation with his missionary parents, is credited with coming up with an alternative plan.  The Navajo language was spoken by only a small population, and - more importantly - was an unwritten oral language, meaning that the Japanese could not themselves learn it from any published source.   Chester and 29 other Navajos were subsequently challenged to come up with a code based on their native tongue.

The book goes on to describe Chester's experiences in the fox holes of Guadalcanal and other Pacific battles, and then moves on to his life back in the U.S. after the war.  I'll end the narrative here, but there are some takeaways from Chester's story that especially impressed me: 

- As indicated in the quote above, Chester and his friends were proud to serve our country in the Marines.  However, as members of the Navajo Nation, they were not even allowed to vote at the time; Native American weren't granted full voting rights in every state until 1962.

- The Code Talker mission remained secret even after the War's end; it was not declassified until 1968.  What it meant for Chester Nez and the others was that, unlike other veterans, they could not openly talk about their specific experiences and important role in helping win the war.  The silence weighed heavily on them, as all that the heroes could convey to their families and friends for more than twenty years was, as he put it: "The Marines isssued me a gun and some ammunition and told me to go hunt down and kill some Japanese".

- It took until April of 2000 before the Code Talkers were officially honored for their heroism.  A bill introduced by New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman titled "Honoring the Navajo Code Talkers Act" was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in December of 2000, and in July of 2001, the surviving Code Talkers were awarded with the Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush.

In recent years, the states of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah have dedicated  portions of their state highways to the Code Talkers, and August 14 has been designated as the annual "Navajo Code Talkers Day"

Navajo Code Talkers Monument

What I wish we had known while we were travelling in that part of the country is that there is a Navajo Code Talkers Monument in Window Rock, Arizona, just a half hour detour from our path along I-40.  

We'll just have to plan another trip! 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

* Notably, the Navajo Tribal Council issued a resolution in the Spring of 1940, while the war in Europe raged but well before the U.S. entered the war.  It reads in part:

"Whereas, the Navajo Tribal Council and the 50,000 people we represent, cannot fail to recognize the crisis now facing the world in the threat of foreign invasion and the destruction of the great liberties and benefits which we enjoy on the reservation....

....Now, Therefore, we resolve that the Navajo Indians stand ready as they did in 1918, to aid and defend our Government and its institutions against all subversive and armed conflict and pledge our loyalty to the system which recognizes minority rights and a way of life that has placed us among the great people of our race."

 

May 2022 - The Father of Landscape Architecture

Hartford's Native Son

(Note: Some parts of this story were taken from an NFTH column of ten years ago, which was based on Olmsted's biography A Clearing in the Distance by Witold Rybczynski.)

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted, born in Hartford on April 26, 1822.  Perhaps most famously known for his design of New York's Central Park, he is considered to be the "Father of American Landscape Architecture".

Olmsted's father John ran a successful dry-goods business on Main Street, right around the site of today's Gold building, Frederick didn't follow in the family business, and his career path was definitely a circuitous one.  By the time he had reached his mid-20's, he had apprenticed first as a surveyor, then as a clerk for a New York import company, served as a merchant ship crewman on a year-long journey to China, and started a gentleman's farm and a fruit tree nursery business on Staten Island.

Still somewhat unfocused at that point, he travelled to Europe when he was 28 and spent six months roaming with his brother, much of it taking in the countryside and parks of England.  The trip seemed to stimulate Olmsted's interest in the landscapes around him.  His letters from that journey turned into a series of columns for The Horticulturist magazine and eventually his first book, Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England.

Back in the U.S., his writings led to a commission to travel through the pre-Civil War South and into Texas; his observations from that journey led to another book, A Journey Through Texas , as well as solidifying his staunch anti-slavery stance (CLICK HERE for a recent summary of that book). 

In 1857, Olmsted was initially hired for the Central Park project strictly to fill in the role of overseeing the project's workforce, but he was soon approached by British architect Calvert Vaux to collaborate with him in the competition for the park's design.   Their entry won out over 32 others, and construction began with Olmsted serving as designer and superintendent; the park opened in the winter of 1858-1859. 

His undertakings over the next decade or so were as varied as those of his youth: first general secretary of the U.S. Sanitary Commission under President Lincoln during the Civil War, manager of the Mariposa gold mine in California (near what is now Yosemite National Park), writer for monthly periodicals, and founder of The Nation magazine.  

It was in his 40's that Olmsted's life took a permanent turn towards landscaping and city planning: "Olmsted, Vaux & Company, Landscape Architects" was formed in 1865.  Together, the two Central Park partners provided designs for parks in Brooklyn, Buffalo, Chicago, the University of California, Cornell University --- and even the Institute of Living in Hartford and little Walnut Hill Park in New Britain!

Walnut Hill Park, New Britain: one of Olmsted's lesser known achievements

Their firm dissolved in 1872, but Olmsted's work continued with projects including Mount Royal Park in Montreal, the U.S. Capitol Grounds, the Back Bay Fens in Boston, the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, the National Zoo in Washington, Stanford University, Smith College, and ---- closer to home --- Trinity College.

As if those endeavors weren't enough to keep him busy, he also produced urban design plans for a number for cities.  But one of his most interesting projects was for a "city" that was only meant to stand for a few months: the "White City" of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, also known as the Columbian Exposition (in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the New World). 

Chicago's "White City", 1893

Eventually, Olmsted's sons Frederick Jr. and John Charles joined their father's landscaping firm and developed an impressive resume of projects on their own: Mount Holyoke, Harvard Business School and other universities, as well as Hartford's Pope Park.  They even had a hand in Springfield's Forest Park.

Olmsted moved to Brookline Massachusetts in 1881, and died there in 1903 at the age of 81.  His Brookline home is now the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, but he is buried in his native Hartford, in the city's Old North Cemetery.

For more information about Olmsted, including the planned celebrations for this year, his bicentennial, go to this link: https://www.olmstedlegacytrail.com/ 

 

 

April 2022 - Vermont's Fifth Season and Other Randolph News

 Vermont's Fifth Season

March 21: the intersection at the end of our street

For the rest of you, March 21 was the first full day of Spring; for us here in Vermont, it was the height of Mud Season - and this year's season was an epic one, even according to those who have lived here for decades.  The war and pandemic took a temporary back seat in conversations around town, and instead all the talk was about which roads were impassable and how well the tow-truck businesses were doing.  Some roads had to be closed completely and school buses rerouted to avoid the worst spots.  

Edge of the abyss: those cars in the background are parked on pavement; their owners chose to leave them there and walk the extra mucky distance home

We live a quarter mile up a hill on one of those gravel roads, and while most of our street has remained passable, the only way out of the neighborhood is through the four-way intersection that you see in the pictures above.  Needless to say, we limited our trips back and forth to town.

Mud season and the preponderance of gravel roads in the state were the featured topics on a recent Vermont Public Radio broadcast.  This link provides a transcript of that show as well as some more pictures:   CLICK HERE.

As I write this, the roads are clearing up and it looks like we're going to make it to the actual Spring season.  We like to think of the "season of mud" as the price we pay for living in paradise the other four seasons of the year. 

Celebrating the Fifth Season with a cake (source and baker unknown)

~ ~ ~

Big Doings in Our Little Town

Randolph, Vermont isn't quite the picturesque touristy town like Woodstock or Stowe - not necessarily a bad thing - but the town has been making the news lately, even on the national level.   

Dining:

You might not think of Randolph when looking for a fine dining experience, but that's changing: back in February, Nisachon "Rung" Morgan,the chef at our local Thai restaurant  SAAP,  was nominated for the James Beard award in the category of "Best Chef".  She is one of just five finalists in the Best Chef category for the New England region; the other four being from restaurants in the big cities of Boston and Portland.  

SAAP

The restaurant is located in a wing of the Kimball House, a Victorian home built in 1887 by Randolph financier and benefactor Colonel Robert Kimball.  

Nisachon, a native of Thailand, and her husband Steve, pretty much run the place by themselves these days, as the pandemic forced them to discontinue in-house dining and reduce their staff.  During that difficult shut-down period, John and I made a habit of ordering take-out from SAAP and other restaurants in town on Saturday nights as a way to support local businesses.  

SAAP has since reopened for dining, and the traffic has grown now that the place has attracted regional attention and out-of-town diners.  Due to the continued staff level shortages, however, Nisachon and Steve are finding themselves with the first class problem of having more business than they can handle, often resorting to taking their phone off the hook. 

Our experience in attempting to order take-out or even to dine-in at SAAP in the last few weeks has taught us that it may be a while before we can enjoy their food again, but we're very happy for Nisachon and Steve and wish them luck in the further James Beard competition in Chicago this June.  For the full story as it appeared on our local news, CLICK HERE.

Mountain Biking:

That's our neighbor Zac.  Photo credit: VTSports.com

In other local news, the town of Randolph is the recipient of a part of a $140,000 national grant to plan and build the "Velomont Trail", a mountain bike trail that will eventually connect the already existing trails in the state into one 485 mile bike trail stretching from the Massachusetts border up to Quebec.  For more on the story, CLICK HERE.

HAPPY TRAILS UNTIL NEXT MONTH!

March 2022 - Winter Pastimes

OUTDOORS

Ski jumping was on my mind last week - not just because of the Olympics, but because it was the 100th anniversary of Harris Hill Ski Jump in Brattleboro Vermont.  Harris Hill wasn't the first ski jump in the U.S. - that distinction belongs to Swedes in Minnesota in the 1800's - but at 98 meters, it's only one of a handful of ski jumps in the country of that size.  It has hosted a number of national championships, and all of this year's U.S. Olympic ski jumpers have jumped at Harris Hill.  The hill was even the site of a jump by none other than Olympian Eddy "The Eagle" Edwards in 1996 (see interview in this video; it starts about a minute in).    

I've often wondered what makes people take up ski jumping - how they make the (excuse the pun) leap from "I like gliding down the hill on my skis" to "Gee, wouldn't it be fun to fling myself into space and try to land still standing and attached to my skis".   It's kind of like the sport of Skeleton in the Olympics: what makes someone think that sledding would be much more fun speeding headfirst on an icy winding course at 80 miles per hour (and really, how much protection does that helmet provide at those speeds?).

But getting back to plain old skiing and sledding: as we say in the north country, to get through the winter, you've just got to embrace it - snow, freezing temps and all - and I for one agree. Hitting the ski slopes provides for some panoramic views, and is a great way to enjoy the outdoors with friends.  My favorite winter activity, however, is snowshoeing.  It's a quieter, more contemplative sport, available right out of my back door; we're fortunate to live in an area with plenty of trails and terrain to wander. 

As with other sports, there are those that have taken snowshoeing to a higher level -- even turning it into an art form, like fellow Vermonter John Predom who was featured on the local news recently.   The pictures below are just a preview; CLICK HERE for a video of how it's done.

I'm impressed with Mr. Predom's creativity and determination, but am positive that he doesn't have a pet dog that joins him on his walks.   Whenever I try to stomp out a heart or other simple pattern in the snow, I can count on Zoey to run through my creation with her own embellishments.

INDOORS

Mud Season is just around the corner for us; it'll reduce our snow cover to random dirty glacial piles while we languish waiting for the first crocuses.  A perfect time to brush up on those indoor games - of which there are so many new options:  

Have any of you gotten caught up in the world of WORDLE as I have?  By way of brief explanation: the game is available online at www.nytimes.com/games/wordle/ ; I think of it as kind of a spin on Scrabble and Wheel of Fortune.  You start by entering any five letter word that comes to mind, and you have six tries to figure out WORDLE's word for the day.  The game is an exercise in patience as you can only play once a day - no whiling away the hours with round after round.

More of a numbers geek instead of letters?   There's NERDLE (https://nerdlegame.com/), another once-a-day game, but in this case you have to guess the mathematical expression in six tries:

Finally, there's GLOBLE (https://globle-game.com/) - a little different than the others in that there is no six-guess limit - but a good way to brush up on your world geography as you try to guess the country of the day.

I'm sure there are many other spinoffs of the original WORDLE.  Send them my way - I'll need them to get through Mud Season!   

For now, it's time for me to strap on those snowshoes.

February 2022 - Snow and Other Gems

 

Snow is on a lot of our minds after this past weekend's storm.   

Not all will agree, but it seems to me that the best way to get through the winter in the "North Country" is to simply embrace it, summoning up that inner child (health permitting) to go play in the snow, either on the slopes or just out on cross-country trails.  In Vermont, we mostly look forward to snow because it sure beats the damp chill and bleakness of a winter of freezing rain -- common in places just south of us, and useless for any outdoor activity.  It's also preferable to the threat of falling iguanas that Florida has been plagued with lately. 

So, it was disappointing for us to watch Boston and other cities get buried by storm Kenan while seeing not a single snowflake fall outside of our windows.  Fortunately, though, the month of January was cold enough so that the snow from prior storms has remained on the ground, providing decent and uninterrupted conditions for all snow sports.   

We took full advantage of those conditions last week at Sunday River in Maine, enjoying five days of skiing with close friends: Jerry and Laura Kimble, Diane Lototski and husband Brian, and John's brother Jay and wife Andrea. 

(A side note here: this trip was a long time coming - originally planned for Montana in March of 2020, John and I had to drop out at the very last minute due to broken bones, while the rest of the crew flew out on March 13 only to have to scramble to find flights home three days later when the ski area, along with the rest of the country, shut down due to the pandemic)

Skiing can be a very costly sport, but there are packages and discounts to be had with some pre-planning......or, if you just live long enough.  There was a time about 35 years ago that most ski areas offered free skiing for those 70 and above; that practice has fallen by the wayside because now there are too many in that age group that still hit the slopes. However, Sunday River was celebrating "Senior Week", and for seniors like myself, that meant purchasing a five-day pass at a discounted rate.  For those over 80 years of age - no names mentioned - a five day pass was an unbelievable $9 (that's nine dollars for the week, or about the same as the price for two cups of coffee at the mountain's lodge).  

Senior week at Sunday River: Jay, Laura, Jerry, Brian, Chris, John, Diane, Andrea

Seniors or not, it was wonderful week - many laughs, a fair amount of skiing, and a lot of kvetching about our senior skier aches and pains.  The weather was on the cool side but mostly sunny and clear, giving us views of the White Mountains all around us and even a few glimpses of the Presidential Range some thirty miles to the southeast.  When one morning dawned with temperatures in the minus double digits, some of us took the day off from skiing to check out nearby Bethel Maine, where we found a hidden "gem" - actually a multitude of gems - at the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum. 

The two-story exhibit follows an expertly curated path from the story of Maine's early mining days, including samples of minerals and naturally formed crystals found in the region, to a gallery of meteorites from the moon, Mars, and beyond that found their way to the Earth.  The displays are all interactive, providing a deeper dig into each of the items on display.  

From the moon

Just one of the many crystals on display - all or most mined in the region.

Snow comes in many forms.....but we prefer the real stuff!

All in all, a good way to spend a cold January day - and well worth a detour if you're ever in the area, less than an hour's drive from Mount Washington.

As I write this, they're forecasting another storm for later this week.  Be careful out there...but if you can, go out and play in it!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

P.S. This Sunday, February 6, is the anniversary of what we refer to as Storm Larry, which closed down Hamilton and the entire state and region in 1978.

January 2022 - December Review

Another Atypical Christmas

Last month, I wrote about how Christmas 2021 was setting up to be an improvement over last year.  That in fact proved true for the most part, as we managed some friend and family visits and other activities in the days leading up to the big day.  

However, as those of you living in the New England know, Mother Nature had other plans for Christmas Day.  An icy, white-knuckled trip to church services on Christmas morning and a look at the forecast for all of the region convinced us to cancel our planned trip to my sister-in-law's home in Massachusetts. 

Christmas Day at home with our new presents:
me and my jigsaw puzzle; Zoey with her ducky

So, for the second year in a row, Christmas was spent quietly at home.  Vowing not to do anything "constructive" all day, we spent the day reading and working on a jigsaw puzzle against the TV backdrop of one Christmas special after another.  Dinner was by candlelight in the dining room - an American Flatbread pizza (15 minutes from freezer to table!), served with a suitable bottle of Malbec.   A perfect peaceful day!  (and in fact fortuitous, as we found out afterwards that my sister-in-law's husband was diagnosed with the virus just two days later).  

At least it was a White Christmas!

An Atypical  - But Perfect - New Year's

For most of the last thirty-plus years since we've owned this house, we've hosted the same basic group of friends for a New Year's Eve weekend of celebration and skiing.  Last year's festivities were limited to a toast via Zoom, but thanks to the rapid home tests, we were able to open our home to our visitors from the south again.  

Unfortunately, the warm and rainy weather in the days after Christmas thwarted any plans for skiing, but it didn't thwart the merriment of sharing laughter (and lots of food and wine) with old friends!

Happy New Year: Jerry, John, Brian, Chris, Laura, Diane

Good-Bye to a Faithful Furry Companion

Happy though the holidays were for us, they had started out on a sad note: we had to say good-bye to our Chocolate Lab Abby on December 1. She lived an incredibly long life for her breed - 14 years and 8 months (100+ in dog years).

Abby in 2007...
...and in 2021

To paraphrase part of a story that I wrote about her here a few years ago:

"Abby has a sweet nature and, like just about all Labs, does not have a single mean bone in her body.  Still, there is something a little "different" about her.   She has never figured out quite what to do with dog toys, and has never managed to get one to squeak.  She loves to greet visitors, but can hardly be touched without melting into the ground in a jumble of wiggles (indeed "Wiggles" has become her nick name).  On walks, she never follows a straight line, but takes a serpentine path from one side of the road to the other for samplings of roadside weeds and blades of grass. No clump of mown sod, random twig or stray animal dropping is left uninspected as she drags us behind on a zig-zagged route.

Abby is also the only Lab we've ever heard of who is afraid of water. John maintains that she’s got a hidden zipper somewhere in her chocolate Lab suit and that someday we'll find she's really just an oversized cat in costume."  

"Different" or not, Abby found her niche in her later years.   She followed her big sister Gracie (our Black Lab, who we lost at age 13 1/2 in 2018) into a career as a Therapy Dog of Vermont.  Abby had failed the qualification test the first time she took it because she was too timid; but she studied hard and earned her TDV credentials a few years later at the advanced age of 11.   For the next couple of years, she brought smiles to the residents of the local nursing home as well as the senior day care center.   Her career was cut short when the pandemic forced the facilities to shut down to non-essential visitors, but her retirement was spent contentedly at home, with her little sister Zoey at her side.

Now we like to think of her as reunited with her big sister Gracie and all other good dogs; perhaps she has even learned to swim.

Gracie and Abby, in much younger years