Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Snowy Lane Changes and Time Changes

      This morning we had a typical March snowstorm.  Heavy, wet snow that eventually turned to rain.  It was well-predicted that it would do exactly what it did.  Well, almost exactly.  The snow started a few hours earlier than originally expected, and that seemed to catch the world by surprise.  Throw in the “spring forward” aspect of Daylight Savings and the morning seemed upside down from the start.

      I spent the night on the Cape as I was worked late into the evening while trying to complete a project Saturday.  There was a lovely pink overcast sky but no precipitation, so I delayed my departure a bit longer to clean up the house a bit.  Leaving the house by 8 AM and believing the storm was tracking from the south, I had no idea that I’d be driving into a mess.  Even when sleet and snow started tapping on my windshield, I thought I’d eventually drive out of it.  Nope – it only got worse the closer I got to New Hampshire.

      With heavy snow well ahead of the plows, the roads quickly turned to crap.  The left lane was a fools paradise.  The middle and right lanes were each a pair of tire tracks, and the average speed dropped to about 45-50 MPH.  Passing very slow drivers involved slowing down, gradually crossing the chasm  of snow built up between the pairs of tire tracks, and then speeding up enough to move past the slower car.  Returning to your original lane involved the same procedure in reverse.  With that kind of drama it was no surprise that many drivers just opted to stay put in whatever lane they were in.

      Traffic was much heavier than you’d expect in a snowstorm like that, making me believe that I wasn’t the only one thrown off by the timing of the heaviest snow.  But despite the hazardous driving conditions, there were only two accidents on the route that I took through Boston – one on the Southeast Expressway and the other north of Boston in the Somerville area.  In both cases the cars were SUV’s whose driver’s clearly thought all wheel drive made them invincible.

      For all the driving I do, I only find myself in these kinds of conditions a few times per year now.  Weather forecasts tend to be more accurate, and experience has taught me to time my drives better.  Today was an exception, and thus a memorable morning.  Worst part of the drive was looking at the clock on the car’s dash and realizing I had to move it forward an hour.  But my car won’t let me do it while the car is moving so the lost hour mocked me the entire drive.

    • Routines & Systems

      “Routine is one of the most powerful tools for removing obstacles.  Without routine, the pull of nonessential distractions will overpower us.  But if we create a routine that enshrines the essentials, we will begin to execute them on autopilot.” – Greg McKeown

      I’m a big believer in established routines.  Unfortunately I’ve got a lazy routine established at the moment.  Not enough rowing, walking, burpees, and weights.  A few days ago I set out to re-establish a routine by starting small – ten burpees and ten push-ups.  Just do them at the same time every morning, just after I get up, and once the routine is established start increasing the workload.

      James Clear, in Atomic Habits, talks about focusing on a system, and not on goals.  I feel that’s about right too.  He also says it’s okay to miss, but don’t ever miss twice.  More good advice.  Of course, I missed more than twice, but who’s counting?  I should be.

      Last summer and fall I had a pretty solid routine that included fifty burpees per day, no matter what.  But then I injured my back, and that what mattered.  My back is back to normal again, but the routine of fifty burpees per day hasn’t reappeared.  Perhaps starting with ten and building back up again will do the trick.  After all, ten is way better than zero.

    • Algebra 1

      Deep in the recesses of my brain are memories of Algebra 1.  In the fall of 1980 I took Algebra 1 in a fragile state, and it didn’t end particularly well.  I’d moved to a town I wasn’t particularly fond of, went to a school with a bunch of people I didn’t know, and was taking a class that I was indifferent to.  If I excelled in English, History and other classes of the time, my fourteen-year-old mind just couldn’t wrap itself around Algebra 1.

      I would bring my homework home, ignore it as long as possible, try to tackle it when I was falling asleep, and bring it incomplete into school.  The Algebra teacher at the time had a tactic to ensure that students would do their homework; Public embarrassment.  He’d have as all march up to the chalk board and do one of the assigned problems for all to see.  So a row of us would shuffle up to the chalk board, and one by one students would finish the problem and sit down.  Until there was only one person standing, staring at an unfinished problem on the board.  That would be me.

      I’m not sure how many times we went through this exercise, but it was many times.  If the teacher was trying to shame me into doing the homework, it didn’t have the desired effect.  Instead I grew to hate Algebra 1 more, and became more reluctant to do the homework, and the cycle continued.  Rather than work with me, he seemed to be as indifferent to my struggles as I was to the subject.

      And then something funny happened.  I was moved into another Algebra class with a different teacher.  This new teacher had us do the problems in class, and helped us work through the problems when we needed him.  And when we finished our work he had chess boards in the classroom and we’d play chess until the bell rang.  So we all hustled to finish our homework as quickly as possible so we could play chess.  I got an A in that class and while I’ve never been a math wiz it broke the hex that was hovering in my head.

      I learned three things from that teacher.  First, that Algebra could be fun.  Second, that chess was a magical game that I quickly fell in love with.  And third and most importantly, learning takes commitment from both sides.  I own the responsibility for my initial failures with Algebra, but so did that teacher.  I don’t remember the first math teacher at all, but I can still picture the second teacher.  I wonder if the two ever discussed the quirky, quiet redhead who took Algebra 1 with them.  I ended up being one of the students marched up on stage in senior year to get academic awards from the teaching staff.  It was a long way from the Freshman Algebra 1 class.

    • The Corner of Broadway and Hudson

      One of the more significant street corners in American History is the intersection in Albany where Broadway meets Hudson Avenue.  This is the site of the old Stadt Huys where in 1754 representatives from several colonies met to discuss the Albany Plan of Union.  This group, known as the Albany Congress, consisted of a few famous men from the time, but the most famous of all was Benjamin Franklin.

      Coincidently this site, 23 years later, was also the location where the Declaration of Independence was first read in public.  Albany was a critical hub during both events.  In 1754 Albany was the edge of the wilderness.  In 1776 Albany was the center of the Northern Army’s efforts to repel the British Army, which was attempting to cut New England off from the rest of the colonies by seizing control of the Hudson River.

      Reading the Declaration of Independence in Albany had a galvanizing effect on the people who heard it.  Remember, Albany was under siege from all sides in the summer of 1776.  The British had swept over Long Island and Manhattan, and occupied New Jersey downstream.  They had just taken control of Lake Champlain to the north – a critical highway for troop movement from Canada.  And the Iroquois were allied with the British just to the west.  Albany was in a precarious position on July 19th when the Declaration was read.

      In 1876, according to The Friends of Albany History, a ceremony commemorating the centennial of the reading happened in this spot:
       “Before a gathering of “two or three thousand” Albany residents, the tablet, which was covered by an American flag, was unveiled by Visscher Ten Eyck (Matthew Visscher’s grandson.) The tablet’s reveal was greeted by hearty cheers from the crowd, patriotic songs, chimes from the steeples of nearby churches, and a 100-gun salute.”
       
      Tonight, almost 141 years since that ceremony, 241 years since the Declaration was read in this spot, and 263 years since Ben Franklin led the Albany Congress to draft the Plan of Union, I had a couple of pints across the street from the commemorative plaque and stone that marks the site.  There are many people in history whom I’d like to have met, but Ben Franklin is high on that list.  Since I can’t have a drink with him having two pints with a nod to history will have to be close enough.

    • Mystery Hill

      I live roughly a mile and a half from a place called America’s Stonehenge.  It’s also known as Mystery Hill, and I like that name a bit more because it infers that there’s much about the site that is unknown.

      Here’s a great description of the site from the mysteryhillnh.info web site:

      The Mystery Hill archaeological site, better known today as America’s Stonehenge, is situated on the exposed bedrock summit of Mystery Hill in North Salem, New Hampshire. The site consists of a core complex of 13 stone chambers, several enclosures, niches, stone walls, stoned lined drains, small grooves & basins, and other features which covers about one acre on the summit. Extending outward from and surrounding the core complex, are more stone walls, niches, standing stones, and two procession ways. Along the perimeter of the summit are four confirmed astronomical alignments. Below the summit on the slopes of the hill are a 14th chamber, two utilized natural caves, springs, stone walls, stone cairns, niches, standing stones, and other features. In total, the site covers about 105 acres.

      I’ve lived in close proximity to this site for twenty years.  And yet I’ve only visited it twice – once alone and once with my daughter.  If you’re an archaeological buff, an astronomy buff, or a mystery buff its a great place to visit.  I’m a history buff and like to understand the place I live in.  A large part of that is who lived here before me.  Mystery Hill has carbon dated evidence of people living in this area 7000 years ago.  Native Americans were most likely those people, and they most likely lived in the area well before that.  What we know for sure is that the Native American presence in the region was largely gone for a number of reasons by the time of the French and Indian War.  Colonial settlements continued to nudge further and further north and west and eventually the area because fully colonized, first as Methuen, Massachusetts and eventually as Salem, New Hampshire.

      About ten years ago a Boston television station did a live broadcast at America’s Stonehenge, and the weather person at the time, Dylan Dryer, laid down on the stone table that many people think was a sacrificial alter because of the drainage channels carved into it.  Maybe it was, maybe it was just the place where they cleaned up whatever they brought back from the hunt that day.  Either way, I thought it was interesting that she laid down on that spot.  Apparently there was no bad mojo as she’s now on national television and seems to be doing just fine.

      Look at Mystery Hill from a Google satellite map and the first thing that jumps out at you are the spokes of clear cut trees coming out from the center of the hill.  This was done by the people who manage America’s Stonehenge to provide clear lines of sight on the celestial points that are marked.  Whether this was done thousands of years ago by Native Americans or Celtic visitors or by a farmer in the 1800’s building off what was up on the hill I don’t know.  But I do know it’s impressive to see when you’re standing on the viewing platform.

      The other thing you notice when you look at that Google Satellite map is the encroaching development on all sides.  That’s accelerating with a development eating into the woods to the southeast of Mystery Hill.  I find this disappointing, but not surprising for Salem, New Hampshire.  The town seems to value real estate development and commercial space over conservation space.  But then again, Mystery Hill has been here before with waves of settlers clearcutting and farming the land around it.  And until some developer plugs condos on top of the hill it (wouldn’t put it past Salem) the site will continue to mark time one celestial year after the next.

    • Two Epic Marches in 1775

      During the early days of the Revolutionary War, there were two epic marches of heroic proportion.  Henry Knox’s Noble train of artillery in November and December 1775 was one.  Benedict Arnold’s march through the wilderness of Maine for the invasion of Quebec in September to November 1775 was the other, and the one that seems to have been lost to history because of Arnold’s turncoat future in the war and the immediate result from each effort.

      Benedict Arnold was the person credited with the idea of hauling the artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, which was occupied by British troops but under siege from the colonists.  The Generals recognized that a long, drawn-out siege was going to help the British more than the colonists, as reinforcements from England would be arriving at some point in the spring to try to eradicate the uprising.  Ships in Boston harbor weren’t going to leave just because militiamen were surrounding Boston.  Artillery was needed to encourage them to move on.

      Since Arnold was a little busy marching through the wilderness of Maine, it fell on Henry Knox to bring the cannon from Ticonderoga to Boston.  As with any travel in those days, using existing waterways was much easier than horse paths through the woods.  So bringing almost 120,000 pounds of cannon down the Hudson River to Albany made a lot of sense, but from there they needed to haul the cannon on sleds across ice and rough terrain all the way to the Dorchester Heights.  The hardest part of this overland trip must surely have been bringing them over the Berkshires roughly where Blandford, Massachusetts is today (where the Massachusetts Turnpike cuts through the Berkshires).

      Arnold by contrast sailed to the Kennebec River and up to Augusta, Maine, where he began his march through the wilderness to Quebec.  He started with 1100 men, and reached the St. Lawrence with about 600 starving men.  Some starved to death on the trip, and the rest abandoned the march and retreated towards home.  Arnold’s expedition was even more bold than Knox’s.  Yet the immediate results were very different.  Knox’s artillery chased the British out of Boston on what is forever celebrated as Evacuation Day in the city.  Arnold’s army reached Quebec and were met there by Montgomery’s troops who had come from Lake Champlain.  Ultimately they didn’t have the numbers or the artillery to lay a proper siege on Quebec, and they were eventually chased away as the ice broke on the St Lawrence and British reinforcements arrived to chase them down.

      Two men remembered differently in history.  Benedict Arnold’s name is forever associated with treason, but in the early years of the war he was a hero many times over.  Henry Knox would continue to grow his career in the Continental Army, becoming the Secretary of War for the United States.  His name lives on at Fort Knox.  Benedict Arnold doesn’t have any forts named after him, but the United States may not have won the war without him.

    • Ice Sculptures

      Winter in New England brings an endless cycle of freezing and thawing.  This morning we got heavy wet snow.  Today it has warmed up and much of the snow is melting.  Tonight brings bitter cold and water will re-freeze.  This constant cycle brings frustration to those who are ready for spring, but it also brings ice sculptures to the landscape.

      This is most apparent wherever water flows over a surface and down.  The blasted ledge along the side of the highways is a great spot to see ice sculptures as you drive by.  Quarries, rail trails and nature rock outcroppings are other options for seeing ice sculptures.  And of course waterfalls offer a daily transformation as water flows and freezes.  Icicles hanging off rooftops are another source of ice sculpture inspiration.

      Sunday we walked the Windham Rail Trail again.  It was transformed by ice and snow from the previous time we’d walked it a couple of months ago.  Part of that transformation is the ice flows coming off the blasted ledge on the north side of the trail, which formed spectacular ice sculptures.  It’s one of the joys of winter, if you only look for it.

    • Hiawatha, Ben Franklin and the United States Constitution

      The Iroquois Confederacy, or the Five Nations as the British called them, were five united tribes that as a confederacy were stronger than the sum of their parts.  The Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Cayuga and Seneca were united through the efforts of Hiawatha.  Hiawatha, an Onondaga adopted by the Mohawk, was born around 1525 and became a great orator.  He was Chief of the Onondaga and a follower of Deganawida, a tribal elder who recognized that the Iroquois were weakening themselves by constantly fighting amongst themselves.  Deganawida apparently wasn’t much of a speaker, while Hiawatha was considered a dynamic speaker.  They developed “the Great Law of Peace” and sold the other tribal nations on it, creating the Iroquois Confederacy.

      Ben Franklin and other powerful men in the British colonies saw the power of this confederacy and sought to model it.  Benjamin Franklin’s Albany Plan of Union was the first attempt to bring the colonies together.  It served as the foundation for the United States Constitution, whose preamble reads:

      We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

      At its core, the concepts of a common defense and promotion of the general welfare were modeled after the powerful example in Upstate New York in the Iroquois Confederacy.  So in some ways Hiawatha influenced the very core of who we are as a nation.  And yet most people don’t think of Hiawatha of the Iroquois when they think of Hiawatha.  They think of the Hiawatha from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem ‘The Song of Hiawatha’, which was a fictional character from a different tribe (The Dakota).  Longfellow knew of the legend of Hiawatha and decided that this name would be better than the original name he was working with.  And ironically, the fictional character Hiawatha is more famous than the actual Hiawatha is today.

    • Chickadees in the Snow

      “All substance is soon absorbed into nature, all that animates it soon restored to the logos, all trace of them both soon covered over by time.” – Marcus Aurelius

      I was helping Bodhi down the stairs last night and noticed a set of chickadee tracks in the snow.  I thought to myself that they would make a great picture for the right photographer (I’m a pale alternative).  Bodhi proceeded to step into the snowy tracks, forever changing the image.  And yet there were still a couple of other tracks in the snow that I opted to leave well enough alone.

      This morning the tracks were still there.  Not a complete surprise since the temperatures remained below freezing and there was no snow overnight.  But there will be tonight and these tracks will disappear in time; a memory for me and anyone else who happens to see them before they’re forever lost.  So I took a picture to capture the moment.  I’ve done my best to capture as many moments as I can with photography.  I recognize that sometimes you have to live the moment instead of constantly having the phone out, and I’ve tried to keep the phone in my pocket most of the time.  Perhaps InstaGram has suffered for the omission, but I don’t believe the 20-30 people who look at my pictures felt the lapse.

      There is only today after all.  We’re told to make the most of it and generally I live that way.  Capturing a moment in time with a photograph is a blessing for only the last eight generations or so.  We all see time flies by too quickly.  Footprints or castles in the sand are typical analogies to this rapid passage of time and our fragile place in it.  But I think I prefer the chickadee footprints in the snow as my analogy.  Chickadees are fragile creatures, and yet they find ways to deal with the harsh New England winters.  Chickadees are social creatures, as much for survival as anything else.  Humans share similar survival instincts, and the same fragility.  Time marches on.  Best to focus on the day at hand.

    • Morning Cleanup

      This morning I got up early and did my usual Saturday morning routine when I’m at home: Coffee and some contemplation, followed by the outside chores.

      Step one as I sip coffee is to look around the house and yard to take stock of what needs to be done.  Once my coffee is done I’ll get to work.  This morning that meant putting on my boots and winter gear and heading outside to shovel shit.  In summer?  Eliminate step one.  This shit’s not going to take care of itself.

      Chores are a form of meditation if you approach them the right way.  Tasks done repetitively, and done well, are a reward in and of themselves, even when that task is shoveling up dog crap.  I don’t take pleasure in the process, but in the result it brings.  Clean yard, walkway, deck…  wherever he’s done his business.  Winter with an old dog is tough.

      Despite having responsibilities in my teens and twenties, I can point to one event that accelerated my journey to adulthood.  I was married to the wrong woman at the time, and had moved to Connecticut with her — literally meeting her halfway between where she’d lived and where I’d lived prior to that.  She got a job before I did, and while I looked for a job I worked part-time at Guiding Eyes for the Blind cleaning dog kennels.  Nothing offers perspective like realizing you’re in a bad marriage while shoveling the crap out of 30 kennels, hosing them down and then going outside to clean up the outdoor kennels they occupied while you were cleaning the indoor kennels.  Day after day while you look for a job in a place where you know next to nobody.

      I thought that, until I became a parent, thankfully in a great marriage the second time around, where changing diapers became one of my primary roles.  Explosive diarrhea blows out a diaper?  Clean it up and change their clothes.  Son’s explosive diarrhea up the entire sleeve of your dress shirt?  Clean it up and change your shirt.  Daughter’s barium enema leaks out all over your dress shoes?  Clean it up and buy new dress shoes.  Shit happens.

      So now, with an older dog who tends to shit while he’s walking somewhere to take a shit, there’s a lot of cleanup again.  But I have perspective on what cleanup can be.  Not optimal but not so bad.  Bodhi is one of many to teach me a lot about myself over the years.  Certainly patience was a key lesson as he went from his adolescent years to his adult years to his senior years.  He’s teaching me a final lesson.  Today it’s him.  Someday it may be me.

      But not today.  The shit’s cleaned up, the bird feeders are filled.  Snow is falling now, adding a coating of white over the places I’d just cleaned.  Looking over at the feeders I see three bluebirds taking turns at one of the feeders.  It’s going to be a good day.