ARE WE LOOKING INTO THE ABYSS?

Sunlight/Dark

 

 I’ve never felt afraid before election day.  Excited, maybe.  Worried, maybe.  But never afraid.  

 

We’ve all heard about things that might happen, election challenges, protests, lawsuits, vengeance, even regardless of who wins.  I have never felt so aware of anger bubbling throughout the country beneath the surface.  In some counties in this country the anger is overt, nothing subtle about it.  Fed by outright lies, misinformation, half truths, circulated more insidiously than ever before.

 

On the surface here things are quiet.  The Trump signs and the Harris signs are scattered here and there, not much different than in Trump’s last time around. Only the Trumps signs are occasionally accompanied by an American flag.  I resent the co-opting. 

 

If Trump wins, or even if he doesn’t, the emotions won’t die. Here’s a telling anecdote:

 

At a Trump rally in Georgia on Wednesday [10/23], Tucker Carlson gave a rant that became an instant classic of perversion. In a shrill tone, he spun out a metaphor in which America is like a house where the children are misbehaving. The toddler is smearing feces on the wall; a 14-year-old is lighting a joint at the breakfast table.

“There has to be a point at which Dad comes home,” Carlson said ominously, to raucous applause. “Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home, and he’s pissed!”  

 

Maureen Dowd, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/us/politics/tucker-carlson-trump-spanking.html

 

Guess who Dad is.  That audience knew, and started calling out his name.  Dad is pissed!

 

When Dad is pissed, he can curse.  He can call people names. He can be tough and he will be being because tough is manly.  Because “children” need to be put in their place.  Who are they, these children?  All those doing things that maybe you don’t much like, all of them bad, bad behavior.   Immigrants, transgender kids, Democrats, liberals, what the heck, all of them––anyone who won’t give Dad the time of day.  Dad is fickle, so consistency doesn’t matter. Dad is old.  But all dads are old, right?  So what? He’s more important than the law. He’ll fight the bad people in a bunch of different ways, depending.  Doing it so you don’t have to.

The rally at Madison Square Garden, kind of an emblematic moment, an apotheosis of giving the world the finger, insults, curses.  The crowd boiling.  Ready for anything.

 

Next week will tell us something.  Something.  Back from the edge?  Too late for that?  

Uh oh...

 Pretty dark down there...

GOING ELECTRIC

 

photo from SpaceX

WHERE I STARTED FROM

 

In the past I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation about cars that lasted longer than five minutes.  But recently, and surprisingly, I’ve had a number of conversations about cars.  A friend who lived in California some years ago told me once she remembered how people at cocktail parties in the Northeast often start up conversations with a line like, “So, what do you do?” At parties in LA she’d be asked, “So what are you driving?” 

 

What I’m driving now is a brand new (nearly two months old) EV/electric vehicle.  I am obviously not an early adopter as many of us have been driving EVs for some years now.  The Tesla, after all, came on the market with the Roadster in 2008* although Tesla didn’t hit it big until the S model came along in 2012.  Still, that was more than ten years ago.  Some members of my family are now on their second Teslas.  One early adopter family member in SF may have gone through three of them.  But that’s California for you.

The empty dash with a beautiful screen

 

For a long time I was afraid to drive an EV.  In my car, a VW Alltrack, a larger version of a VW Golf, the small screen for iPhone use, GPS, texting, music, was a distraction from my looking at the road, even though I could do many things by voice.  If I had to fiddle with something and put a finger somewhere on the screen to do it, sure enough I’d be nudging the center line.  In a Tesla there’s a screen, a gorgeous screen, and nothing else.  I would have to do everything by doing something on the screen.  Sometimes I would have to physically make a selection.  I was afraid I’d go off the road while I was busy choosing.  I heard about the good things with EVs too, of course, like the different kind of braking, the instant power, and so on.  It scared me, though. While I knew my next car would be an electric car, I also thought that a few years would pass before that happened and in the meanwhile EVs would be even better, have longer ranges, and there’d be more charging stations (although I had no conception of how many there already were or what they were like).

 

So–ignorance.  Who keeps up, really, with what’s new with a product if it’s not something you don’t spend any time thinking about in the first place?  If it’s something you just take for granted. Until you find yourself, as I did, at a dealership waiting for a car checkup that turns out to be step one in fixing an obscure (but crucial!) hydraulic problem that could cost up to $2,000 but isn’t immediately problematic.  Of course it was immediately problematic.  Did I really want to pay that much and still have an 8 year old gas-eating, oil-change-needing and other mystery-fluids-eating car? 

 

Did they happen to have any EVs around, I wondered?  Of course they did!

 

WHAT DROVE ME

A test drive.  There was no way I was going to admit this was going to be scary. I’m glad I didn’t, because it wasn’t.  True, I had no idea what the instrumentation in front of me was showing me, and info about all the many options was flooding my brain. It was obvious long ago that once something is handled by computer, designers might just as well add every conceivable function simply because they can.  

Anyway, I bought it.  The screen doesn't do everything; some functions are closer at hand, and not totally reimagined.  A little learning is needed.  Big deal.

 

It's the incentives for going EV that clinched it.  A federal incentive offered $7,500 for new EVs costing under $80,000 and assembled in the U.S.  That includes Teslas, VWs, Rivians (vans and trucks), a Nissan, Chevys, a Cadillac, a Honda, Audis and an Acura. In addition, the state of Vermont offered $2,500 and Green Mountain Power an additional $2,500 and a free home charger (Installation is on you.)  I figured the federal incentive could disappear after the election.  Who knows how long any of them will last.**

WHAT DRIVING!

First I had to drive the car.  And charge it.  Home chargers don’t appear magically, they need to be installed. ($1,500 in my case.)  Meanwhile I found I could charge the car next door where my daughter’s family has a charger they use for a Tesla, and that worked.  I’ll leave out the learning period when I couldn't get the car’s charger port cover (once known as the gas tank lid) open–panic!– because I didn’t appreciate how smart the car was because it didn’t know it was me and knew that whoever this was, they were doing it wrong.  

 

My very first longer-than-grocery-store trip was to pick up a granddaughter in Lebanon, NH.  It was time to try highway driving modes, auto drive and auto-assist. Oooh, it felt like floating.  I actually felt my car was helping me driving better.  I especially loved the mountain roads because of this thing called regenerative braking which I’d never heard of before. No, I had actually,  but I’d paid no attention.  What it is, is taking your foot off the accelerator (gas pedal called “the throttle” by the car dealer which actually sounds more like something on a Model T) so the car immediately slows, and then you can take downhills and curves in a far smoother way without the need for braking. That was a wow.

 

Next was my first time using a public charging site.  Which I would use on my first drive to Boston. I’d gotten some confidence in the process listening to an NPR story about two reporters who took a road trip with an EV from Boston to Washington DC and back using major highways in one direction and minor roads on the return.  They described the charging stops­–fewer off major roads­, no surprise, but not none. Fast chargers took no more than about 20 minutes.  With my new car came a freebie: two years of free charging at Electrify America stations.  (None in Vermont.)

Electrify America fast charger. No idea what cars need the charger on the right.

With my starting charge I could have made it all the way without recharging.  But I was too new to what "range" reallly meant. (Officially, my range when 100% charged is 263; when I charged it to 100% for my trip it read 300-something. What to believe?)   I stopped in Lebanon, NH at Electrify America (which I will call EA).   There were a couple of open slots at the EA site in the remotest corner of a shopping center anchored by a Walmart. I pulled into one, not realizing that some slots were designed for cars with charging ports in the front and others for ports in the back, so when I backed in, which I thought you were supposed to do, the charger wire (hose? cable?) didn't reach.  At this moment the skies opened and buckets of rain began to fall.  Had I not noticed that charging stations had no roofs or covers of any kind?  Back in the car,water everywhere, turn around, try again.  How do I start charging––using my phone or my car screen?  To my surprise the EA's screen recognized me. Evidently some sort of recognition happened between my EA app and my EV.  For the 20 minutes it would take to charge up I could visit the Walmart.  Why not.

I arrived. With more driving to do the next day I left the car for an overnight charge from a downtown Newburyport, MA, slow charger as my daughter's house had a dedicated Tesla charger.  This slot was definitely a back in type.  From the moment I backed in another deluge began. Buckets of rain again.  At least this was my second time, only this time I had to pay.

On the way home a few days later I did an EA stop in Seabrook, NH.  This time I knew what I  was doing, and it wasn't raining either.  The EA site was in the most remote area of the shopping center anchored by a–you guessed it–Walmart.  Only one other car was being charged and I noticed it was the same as mine.  I struck up a conversation with the driver, who said she'd had her car for a couple of years now, totallly loved it.  She had three years of free EA charging  Her first EV had been a Nissan Leaf that never had as long a range after its first year, very disappointing, she said.  This car, though, was great.  Although she said it had "freaked out" the first cold winter day.  But it turned out to be fine.  I didn't think to ask what she meant by "freaked out." ( Maybe I'll find out. )  Mostly we talked about how we'd never go back to (ugh) gas cars.

There I was, talking about cars. And for much longer than five minutes. 

 *In 2018 Musk sent a red Roadster convertible with a human dummy driver (“Starman”) into space.  That seemed cool at the time (I thought so, anyway), but its coolness has faded with the increasing narcissism and weirdness of the guy who sent it up there.  It is, by the way, orbiting around the sun and although the orbit should be stable for several million years (!) according to NASA, it will probably be destroyed eventually by radiation and micrometeoroid impacts.

**No sooner said...Vermont has pulled back from this incentive program as of October 8th, probably because it got too popular (read, costly).

TIME FOR CHANGE

 

NATURAL PHENOMENA

The usual and obvious signals of fall begin appearing as early as late August in some locations.  If you want to see some early color you would have to traverse one of the Gaps, like App (Appalachian) Gap which takes you to 2,375 feet, Lincoln Gap to 2,424 or Middlebury Gap at  2,144.  Lincoln Gap, by the way, is the most interesting of the three in that it rises 1,800 foot in a short time with maximum grades of 24 on the western side, steep and narrow both.

Besides touches of color, there are plenty of other indications of the end of summer.  The hummingbirds are already gone.

The dark spots are dead ants

They had a feeding frenzy during much of August, but their numbers became sparse by Labor Day weekend.  I saw only one at a feeder that weekend, instead of the usual dozen or more.  Not at the same time, although maybe a mate will share. Even though the feeders can accommodate four or five they are territorial and reluctant to share. Reluctant is an understatement.  Sometimes one hummer will claim both feeders at the same time.  After Labor Day all that was left was the dregs–some leftover nectar and the bodies of ants lured by the sugar.  Hummingbirds don't seem to mind sharing with ants.  

Picking up the hay the older way.

The field were still muddy in some places so the mowers left tracks.  Still, they got mowed.

Turkey vultures were all over after the mowing.  There's always carnage after a mowing.

Perhaps because of the frequent rain this summer or despite it, or maybe for some other reason, my apple trees, usually phlegmatic, have turned out to be surprisingly productive.  One of the apple trees hadn't produced a single apple for years until the past two when it managed five or so.  No one I've consulted has an explanation.  Why the raspberry patch was so prolific this year is also a mystery.  Somehow or other everything was just right.

Some branches are weighted down nearly to the ground

In the past the apples were all misshapen

Just one morning's picking

UNNATURAL PHENOMENA

Alas, also kicking off in September is bear hounding (hunting) season. It ends in mid-November.  Bears don't get much of a break here.  One kind of hounding ends and another begins.  That's followed by regular (no hounds) bear hunting which doesn't end until mid-December.  In truth, bear hounding begins in June when hounding training starts.  For the bears there is no real difference between the hounding training and the hounding hunting seasons since bears are chased, attacked, and treed. The trauma may be the same for both seasons, the one difference is they don't get shot at after being treed in training season.   A couple of years ago I asked Vermont Fish & Wildlife bear specialist Forrest Hammond why bear hound training (during which dogs hound bears) is so prolonged.  Hmm, he said, he really couldn't think of the reason. By the time hunting season is over bears have had very little time to live without being harassed.

Photo from Protect Our Wildlife

Ironically, hunters who use hounds are a very small subset of hunters in Vermont. A tiny subset, in fact. There are not many Vermonters who support hounding.  Yet it has its support where it matters most, with the Fish & Wildlife Commission.

Here is information from Protect Our Wildlife, an wildlife advocacy organization that lobbies against houndings and other important wildlife issues:

"Vulnerable bear cubs are separated from their mothers during these chases that start on June 1st. June is a very lean month for bears as they have not been able to recover from their long winter slumber. Bears lose vital fat reserves and calories when they are chased through the woods all in the name of "recreation."  Bears are also at great risk of hyperthermia, which is a real threat during the high heat of summer when they are run for miles by hounds. Vermont hounders have bragged about their hounds chasing a lone bear for six hours until the exhausted animal gave up.  Other evidence collected by Protect Our Wildlife depicts bear hound hunters sharing that mother bears turned to fight the hounds while trying to protect cubs."

The hounds have electric collars that let handlers (hunters) track them.  While the dogs have apparently been trained, they don't always know the difference between bears and other animals, and sometimes not even humans.  Plenty of local incidents testify to that. Often hounds get well ahead of their trackers.  If you've ever chased after a dog, this is not hard to imagine.  In 2019 a couple and their dog were severely attacked here in Ripton by hounds that had gotten well ahead.  Just this week a man walking his dog was attacked in Cornwall.  Hounds run over posted lands, private lands, public lands.  There are no realistic boundaries. 

Photo from Protect Our Wildlife

 

And then there are the coyotes, already vulnerable year round.  From December 15 through March 31 they too can be hunted with hounds.  This is an ugly uptick from what is still standard hunting rules in this state, allowing coyotes to be hunted at any time during the year as it is, and killed in any manner whatsoever.  Kind of like putting them in the same category as, say, rats.  

SAVING WILDLIFE (on a good note!)

I can't brag about having done much (other than supporting Protect Our Wildlife), but there are others who do a lot.

I felt pretty helpless last spring when through the window I saw a duck fighting for its life against what must have been a snapping turtle in my pond.  It seemed to have hold of one of its feet.  After some 20 minutes of fighting for its life (sometimes it disappeared under the water, flapping like mad), it finally managed to get free and I watched it hobble up the grass on the far side.  I went out to see how it was doing, but before I could get close it got so frightened and tried desperately to get away from me.  So I left it in peace.  I called wildlife rescue, but no one nearby was able to take a duck that afternoon, even if I could capture it.  I was poorly prepared, with nothing too put it in, no help available to capture it.  I figured I would let nature take its course.  An easy out, right?  The next morning I looked for the duck, but it was gone.  There were no feathers lying around, no signs of disturbance where I had seen it last.  Whew.  I could let myself imagine it had flown away.  Maybe that really happened.

A different bird's broken foot two weeks ago was a different story. A wildlife rescuer who lives on the other side of Otter Creekwas all to take in an owl that had a broken foot. (How it happened none of us knew.)   It had already been successfully operated on at BEVS (Burlington Emergency & Veterinary Specialists) and was transferred to the wildlife rescuer by very helpful and responsible family members. 

(They've done this before.) 

The owl in question, now in rehab.  Here's lookin' at you!

HEAD IN THE SAND. OR MAYBE NOT.

 

Skyler, during one of many summer thunderstorms

I can empathize.  That was probably the worst of this summer’s frequent thunderstorms.  The loudest, anyway.  Fair to say, Skyler has not enjoyed this summer a whole lot, since he doesn’t like hot, humid air and has no interest in getting into any kind of lake, river or pond, and isn’t a fan of rain, water in another form after all.  Still, it's the electricity in the air that he picks up on, even before the storm arrives.  

Where the bridge ended up after a major torrent:  Flood water pushed it up to the culvert where it stayed until it got pulled out.

 

I can’t say I’ve enjoyed all the rain either.  It’s been too wet for my field to be mowed.  Again. The grasses have grown unchecked, so high now that I can’t see anything in the field besides grass.    In some places the paths are almost tunnels. There a section, a swale, that channels rainfall most of the year, melting snow in the winter, into the pond.  That area tends to stay damp long after other sections have gone dry and hardened up.   Non-stop rain last summer prevented mowing too, so this is year two without mowing–so far.  I’m afraid it will lead to more invasions of poison parsnip, purple loosestrife, and who knows what else.  All of them nibble at the edges of nearly everyone’s meadows.  It’ll be trees, eventually.   

A tight fit between the sumacs and grasses 

 

As I said, re Skyler, I can empathize.  Until Biden announced he would not, after all, run again I had my head under the bed too, metaphorically.  I averted my eyes from news that had anything to do with the election, especially polls.  Thinking about Ruth Ginsburg having stayed on the Court when she shouldn’t have, and when her mind should have been on legacy.  So many egos  wrapped up with past glories, wanting more, just a little bit more. When you read about yet another ruler whose narcissism led him–usually a him–to assuming some form of total control, the phenomenon is pretty obvious to the world, but it looks less reprehensible when the person hanging in there is a nice liberal democratic leader. 

Well, that’s changed.  Now I can pay attention. But still afraid to get too excited.

I suppose I could just cut off the top half...

But I was talking about electricity.  How about the non-thundering kind? 

That kind of electric!

I'd been ignoring the movement toward EVs.  Not ignoring exactly, but figuring it was something I'd consider at some time in the future.  Although there are a couple of Teslas in the hands of family, me actually getting one seemed like a leap.  Although I like being driven in one, being the driver seemed like a whole different thing when I looked at the dash and there' wasn't a single instrument or dial in sight. It looked so cool, but I wasn't warming to it.  I felt like I might drive myself off the road trying to find the windshield wiper.

After waiting around during yet another oil change and service at my VW dealership I got to thinking about their EVs.  I strolled around the showroom, just passing the time.  I chatted about the one VW makes and when I got back home started researching the whole EV spectrum.   The rebates are pretty stunning, $7,500 for certain models, plus $2,500 here, $2,500 there and it started to look compelling.  Most convincing, though, was an article my daughter passed on to me about two NPR reporters who took a round trip in a new 2024 Hyundai Ioniq EV from Boston to Washington, DC, and back, half the route on major highways, the other half on local roads.  They reported they never waited longer than 20 minutes for a recharge.  I thought, I can do that.

So I did it.

Yet another piece of equipment 

Learning how-to has been interesting, in a feel good kind of way.  There was nothing to be gained by reading the manual. It's loaded with endless warnings–Warning! Danger!–and chock full of safety advice.  Either that's because of our litigious society or maybe the fact of a new focus on safe driving, or because everything to do with driving really is dangerous, I couldn't say.  But two pages on how seat belts could maim seems a little excessive.  (You insert them across one another over the two rear seats when not in use so that some injury I can't even imagine could be prevented.)  Far more fun to learn by poking around the screens and finding out what leads to what.  Ideally before driving.

I began to enjoy driving it.  I'd never heard of regenerative braking, but now I love it.  Using it I found I could drive over the Gaps without once needing to use the brakes.  Seriously.  I even tried almost-autonomous driving which I found to be more comfortable that I'd expected.  As with many electronic products, there are bells and whistles (almost literally) simply because there can be.  Like magenta under-dash lighting.  Didn't realize I needed that.  Not as many really fun things as Teslas of course, as they can even make farting sounds. My college age grandson thought that was a fun option, an opinion obviously shared by Elon Musk which tells me how his mind still works at age 50-something.

MINOR HAPPENINGS AT GROUND LEVEL

in the green...

the pond is full for June. Easy to tell once the bridge, visible only by the worn away handrail, becomes a floating bridge.  No idea how much longer it will last, what with being nearly underwater every spring, and now summer too.  It's usually fed by seepage alone, but this time it was rain, and a small stream is draining much of the unmowed meadow.  

the field is unmowed for two reasons, first, it's too wet to mow, and secondly, birds are nesting in the grass, specifically bobolinks, and possibly meadowlarks. The farmer who mows the field isn't going to mow until late July or the start of August.  Barring another wet summer, of course.  Both bobolinks and meadowlarks nest on the ground in open fields.  I've seen and heard the bobolinks, but not the meadowlarks. Both are endangered.  I learned only recently that both are not native to New England, but to the prairies of the Midwest.  With most of that land turned to agriculture, they have moved east where they better odds of survival.  But how good are those odds, really?

taking whacks at buckthorn has resulted in the bare patch next to the shed. Buckthorn–– if you care to know––can be found just about everywhere along forest edges, and all too often within the forest.  It's a particularly widespread invasive in Addison County and the Champlain Valley in general.  Here's Fish and WIldllife's view of its impact:

Common buckthorn berries contain a natural laxative that aids its spread but prevents the birds and mammals that feed on the fruit from absorbing necessary sugars. It is also a host for crown rust fungus and Asian soybean aphid, agricultural pests affecting oat and soybean crops respectively. Buckthorn leaves have a high nitrogen concentration, which can increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil and affect what other species can grow in the area. 

Nobody like likes buckthorn.  It's iseen as an invasive just about everywhere, not just New England.  It's origin is European and Asia.  Like so many other plants and animals, it was an escapee from private gardens, commercial plantings, attempts at "wildlife enhancement" programs or other human manipulations.

Son-in-law Chris has been warring with invasive buckthorn that lines our woods just about everywhere. He's taken down buckthorn in the woods and has recently been working on the woods on the side of my driveway and part of the lawn.  He's taken down tree-sized buckthorns.  He knows he's not going to get rid of it for good because in order to do that you have to remove the roots, a near impossible task that means digging out the equivalent of a half acre of roots, some of which have probably long been entwined with other trees and shrubs.  Since the tree/shrub has been happy to be growing where it is, it will likely continue to thrive.  Why not?  It is content to live in sun or shade, it fruits later and flowers longer than most natives, is pretty much disease free, and insects and animals don't care to eat it. Just the thing for my garden, someone must have once thought.

now you can see the stream, as it carves its way through the woods. Without the buckthorn hedge there's a fresh view into the woods.  The bear that visited last week and overturned a trash barrel darted through the buckthorn at this spot and vanished into the woods below. If he'd been here this week instead, I'd have seen him better.  The stream used to make lazy curves, but the past few years have seen downpours more frequently replacing gentle rains. and the curves are evolving, forming steep banks that will eventually weaken the bases of some the trees lining the edge.  It already looks different than it did ten years ago.  

most of the buckthorn has ended up here in my burn pile.  But there are at least two more giant piles of the stuff. After last year's piled turned to ash, I put grass seed where the pile had been.That was overly optimistic. There will always be a burn pile.  Always.

suddenly last summer this (above) stopped being my kitchen garden.  There were (are) two raised beds, one behind the other, completely hidden under the foliage.  The 4 X 4 wood frames began to give way at the corners last year.  Now I can barely see them.  The meadow is getting ready to reclaim the whole thing, frames and all.  In another year or so I expect the grasses are going to eat it all up.

the new garden is better located, near the kitchen, where it should have been from the start. Planted there this year the tomato plants are already about four feet high, which may not be obvious from the photo, bent over as they are from rain.  Why so much greenery?  The height seems a little excessive since they probably won't have more tomatoes than usual; it's not as if there are dozens of flowers.  But, really, who knows what the ultimate fate of any kitchen garden will be.  One year I had only two cucumber plants and they pushed out 36 cucumbers. Last year I also had only two plants, figuring that was enough to get at least maybe 10 cucumbers. But I got nothing.  Well, not literally nothing. I ended up with a sorry bunch of white zucchini-like things that had no flavor and never turned green, and were basically inedible.  What kind of mutated plant were they, anyway?

speaking of bold greenery, these huge blue hostas, maybe four feet across this season, have decided they are going to outgrow the giant 'Sum and Substance' golden hosta––seen now as only a tiny yellow triangle–– trying to survive behind these two. The blues are also producing about a dozen baby blue hostas that I find poking up everywhere.  No yellow hosta babies. What's going on?  All three giants used to share the location in a friendly, non-aggressive manner. Each had its place.  Now the blues are into world domination. What prompted this? 

overgrowth seems to be happening everywhere.  The maple is coming into its own, but the apple tree is too, and it looks like they are running into each other.  I am not the one who planted either of them, but at the time the distance between them must have looked vast.  But this seems innocent.  Neither tree is trying to dominate the other.  Maybe they're both just probing their boundaries.  

Another view of the burn pile.

  

What's that poking out of the weigela shrub?  Everything wants to have a place in the sun, no matter what else has to be jostled or squeezed between.  But this attempt looks a bit silly.

A mosquito at the window.  Another gift from the wet.

who knows what all these plants and trees will look like in, say, ten years from now.  Or what they would have looked like if a human hadn't been messing around cutting, trimming, planting.  Would there be new invasives?  Maybe a new form of something that was innocently planted but had unrecognized strengths?  What is an invasive exactly?  It can't simply be something that is not native, for that wouldn't allow for the bobolink. Or a plant that has become "naturalized," which sounds like an excuse for nurturing an alien life form.  If invasive means only plants or animals that have "bad" traits, making life harder for other plants or animals, that can lead to some strange quandries, like the issue of barred owls vis a vis spotted owls in California:  barred owls are the more adaptable, thereby threatening spotted owls which have been threatened for some time. Which one should we favor, and by what means?  How long ago must a plant or animal have arrived to no longer be an intruder,or an invasive?  Are starlings, first introduced in 1890, still considered intruders? Invasive?  Maybe these are all our decisions to make, as we are, after all, the master manipulators of nature, bar none.  Or maybe all these decisions of what survives and what doesn't will be made for us.

THE REMARKABLE COLLECTION OF RALPH FARNSWORTH

I originally posted the story of Ralph Farnsworth's unusual collections in March of 2021.  Only a year later I heard that he'd died.  Our local paper, the Addison Independent, had a story this week about the auctioning of at least part of his collection (old gas pumps, for one).  It seemed like a good time to revisit what was once his own museum. Memento of a "lost world" of a sort.

*

You wouldn't ordinarily expect to find little boutique museums around here, would you? Not unless it belongs to a nearby college (Middlebury has its Mahaney Arts Center) or is perhaps the collection of a local Historical Society (Middlebury–the town, this time–has its Sheldon Museum).  The Farnsworth museum, that is, Ralph Farnsworth's museum, open by appointment only, is neither.  

Ralph Farnsworth, of the eponymous museum

 

Localized for you!

It is the obsession of one Ralph Farnsworth who lives in my town.  He is a gentleman, I suppose one would say, of the "old school," not being a newcomer in any sense of the world, still living on the same farm he grew up on, taciturn, the kind of person you might picture when someone refers to an "old Vermonter."   I use the word obsession because you would have to call it an obsession when you collect so many old things over a period of many years and amass so much of it that you need to devote an entire building to house it all.  If his collections were disordered, you would considered him a hoarder and the collection a hoard.  But his collection is very much in order.  And ordered.  By shape, size, and category, mostly.

Still, it's a bit of a shock when you first walk in and see all the–well, stuff.  It's as if you walked into an old general store, pharmacy, farm shed, hardware store, gift shop, all in the same space. 

Everything that's fit to keep

Did I say orderly?

Pencils. Why not!  Plus the odd ruler. 

   

Yes, pencils are arranged together with pencils, hasps, knobs and latches together with hasps, knobs, and latches, clocks with clocks, vacuum cleaners with vacuum cleaners, and so on.  I have no idea what the pencils share in terms of history, if any, but they do make for a pleasing design.

Many, maybe most of us, have samples of the above artefacts in our sheds and garages.  But do we 
arrange them anywhere near as well?  I don't think so.

The above are merely decoration compared with the collection of old tools and what I would call "pre-appliance" appliances, when the word "appliance" still meant merely applying oneself to something, or was used as a noun to describe a water wheel or other such mechanical device.  What, after all, do you call a vacuum cleaner, sans electricity, when it functions more like some sort of dry suction pump (if there is indeed such a thing)?  You could claim it helped build up your arm muscles while using.  But for the fact that those women who cleaned probably weren't in need of additional exercise.  They would more likely have said the hell with this! Give me a broom!

The "Success" model, made by the Hutchison Mgf. Co. of Wilkinsburg, PA, 
its function being demonstrated.  (Mr. Farnsworth hovered, so we weren't 
allowed to touch.) 

Or imagine mowing your lawn with the implement below.  The model in the ad suggests it dates to the 1940's or later.  Was this someone's nutty idea, or was this actually on the market?  Since our curator has two of them, we can guarantee they sold more than one.  (Hmm, it says "sold only by mail order.”)

It weighed in at only 8-½ pounds!

Can you see an early Cuisinart in this food chopper?

We were told by Mr. Farnsworth what each piece was supposed to do, 
but this one had a tag:  "food chopper" 

In the radio, television, phonograph, telephone, toaster and "other" aisles ("other" is part of every display) there are some beautiful old victrolas and an authenticated (provenance on display) Edison equipment.

Toasters and clocks and telephones and more...

Homage to Thomas Edison

The DVD is foreshadowed!

"The Picture Record"?  How, exactly?

And the tape recorder...?

I forget what this was, but it seemed a pretty amazing invention for the time.  No! Not a stove!

Evolution of the light bulb, sort of.

There is what I would call a memories section, labels and advertisements, comic books, and huge stashes of old newspapers.  Nevermind that old newspapers can be found via microfiche.  A few examples below.

Mementos of places visited, events and people remembered, a kind of bulletin board of the past. I 
wonder what it was like at "The Tops" back in the 1920's.  Intriguing.

From the stone age, before Siri began telling us how to get there from here.

Collectibles.  Shocking–to me–that these 'ancient' calendars are only from the 1960's.

As we wound our way through the crowded aisles of things and more things, we came to the Coca Cola section of which there was quite a lot of material, considering it is just one brand.  Why so much about Coke?  "I like Coca Cola," said Ralph.  There you have it.

Toy trains and Matchbox cars join the endless Coca Cola logos.

The Coca Cola area was the last major section of our museum tour.  By this time we were glassy-eyed.  Throughout our wanderings through his collections Mr. Farnsworth dogged our steps, perhaps fearing our fingers might be a tad too nimble.