Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • The High Ground

      During the beginning stages of the French and Indian War, the British Army led by General Edward Braddock and officers that included Thomas Gage and George Washington marched to modern-day Pittsburgh to drive the French out of Fort Duquesne.  During the march, Gage’s Advance Guard failed to secure the high ground.  As they marched towards Fort Duquesne, they stumbled upon French and Indian forces, who quickly took the high ground and leveraged it to drive Gage’s Advance Guard back towards the main army.  In one became known as the Battle of the Monongahela, Braddock rushed his own army forward right into the retreating Advance Guard soldiers.  Chaos ensued, and the French and Indians routed the British forces and killed Braddock.  If lessons were learned in this battle, taking and holding the high ground seems to have been lost on some of them.

      Almost twenty years later, during the beginning stages of the American Revolution, the City of Boston was under siege immediately following the Battles of Lexington and Concord.  Both sides looked at the hills surrounding Boston and recognized the strategic importance of holding these hills as soon as possible.  The Americans were quicker to get there, and under the direction of General William Prescott, 1200 men built a redoubt on Breeds Hill to defend against the inevitable counterattack by the British.

      Old friend Thomas Gage, by now Military Governor of Massachusetts and perhaps not entirely remembering the lessons of the Battle of the Monongahela, ordered the British forces to attack Breeds Hill on June 17th, 1775.  They were repulsed twice with significant casualties, particularly with their officers.  It was during this battle that General Prescott told his American militia “Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes” both for accuracy and because they were dangerously low on ammunition.  In fact, the lack of ammunition is what ultimately led the British to take Breeds Hill on the third attempt.    The Americans fled up and over adjacent Bunker Hill, and for some reason the event has forever been called the Battle of Bunker Hill.  Nine months later, the British evacuated Boston when they looked up at Dorchester Heights and saw the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga pointing down at them, proving they recognized the value of the high ground.

      The colonial American army seized Fort Ticonderoga by surprise and then had a year to fortify it before the British could amass an army, wait out winter, sail across the Atlantic and work their way down the St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain to meet them in battle.  When the British arrived they completely bypassed the fort and took the high ground behind it.  When the Americans holding the fort saw the cannon pointed down at them they knew the jig was up and evacuated the fort.  With barely an exchange the British took Fort Ticonderoga in one day because they saw the high ground that the Americans thought was impossible to haul cannon onto and proved them wrong.

      On July 2nd, 1863, the critical importance of holding the high ground was on display at Little Round Top in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment led by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain repulsed repeated attacks by the confederate soldiers led by Lieutenant General James Longstreet.  Like the Americans at Breeds Hill in 1775, the 20th Maine soldiers were running out of ammunition.  Chamberlain, under orders to hold the line at any cost.  If the confederates were to break through they could flank the Union forces and break the back of the entire Union army.  Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge down the hill, surprising and then routing the confederates.

      The high ground is advantageous, but it doesn’t guarantee those who hold it will win.  What it does guarantee is that there will be a high cost for trying to take it from those who currently hold it.  There’s a lot of talk about taking the moral high ground lately.  Democrats point to Republicans and evangelicals and openly question them taking the moral high ground when they defend the President’s actions and statements.  My BS detector tells me who holds the true high ground, but that could be bias.  What’s apparent though is that continuously attacking those who sit on the high ground, whomever they may be, has a deep cost.

    • The Bread and Roses Strike

      Lawrence, Massachusetts was the epicenter of two significant events in the history of industrial labor.  The first was the Pemberton Mill collapse, which I wrote about yesterday.  The second was the Bread and Roses Strike in 1912.  The strike began when mill workers realized that the mill owners chose to pay them two hours less in wages in reaction to a law passed in Massachusetts requiring women to work a maximum of 54 hours instead of 56 hours.  The mill owners weren’t exactly looking out for the welfare of the immigrants who worked in their mills, and took the cold calculation that if someone was working 54 hours they should be payed for 54 hours, not more.

      On January 11th the workers at the Everett Mills found that their wages were reduced and walked out, beginning the strike.  The next day the Washington Mill discovered their wages were reduced and followed suit.  Everntually upwards of 25,000 mill workers were on strike.  Police and the Massachusetts National Guard were brought in to “keep the peace” and instead poured gas on the fire as violence escalated.  One young woman named Anna LoPizzo was killed and instead of prosecuting the person that shot her the union organizers were framed for murder.

      As the strike continued for weeks families started sending their children on the train to the homes of sympathizers.  When another group of children were gathered together to be sent to more homes, the mill owners and police tried to prevent it.  This led to national attention on the working conditions that the mill workers were living with.  Eventually the mill owners agreed to a 5% raise to end the strike but tensions remained high.  One immigrant was beaten to death for wearing a pro-union pin.

      Over time the higher wages of workers in the mills prompted a shift in manufacturing of textiles, shoes and other items first to the south and eventually overseas.  The horrific working conditions that the Lawrence mill workers labored in shifted to these other places too.  When I hear about sweat shops in China or other places I can’t help but think about the original sweat shops along the banks of the Merrimack River.  The mills didn’t start this way, but over time the plight of the workers degraded  as the greed of the mill owners increased.  Now and then it’s good to look back on the history of the Industrial Revolution to understand why labor laws have evolved the way they have.

    • The Pemberton Mill Disaster

      On a quiet hill overlooking the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts is a monument memorializing the 145 mill workers killed on January 10th, 1860 when the Pemberton Mill collapsed.  Another 166 were injured.  Many victims were women and children.  As recent immigrants to America, the victims were buried at Bellevue Cemetery and this simple monument marks time serving as a reminder of the souls who perished that day.

      The Pemberton Mill disaster remains one of the worst industrial accidents in history.  If it were to happen today the mill owners would be imprisoned for criminal negligence.  The mill was built by the Essex Company in 1853 and was sold at a loss to George Howe and David Nevins, Sr. four years later during an economic downturn.  Howe and Nevins jammed more machinery into the building to make it more profitable.  This proved disastrous as three years later the building collapsed on itself with 800 mill workers inside.

      Immediately after the collapse rescuers converged on the pile of rubble to try to dig victims out.  Sometime during the rescue a lantern caused a fire that quickly grew to an uncontrollable inferno as oil-soaked wooden beams became tinder.  Rescuers could hear dozens of people screaming in terror as the flames raced through the rubble, eventually extinguishing the voices one by one.

      This is one of the most horrific stories I’ve ever read about, and it happened along the banks of the Merrimack River in Lawrence.  I’ve heard about the Pemberton Mill disaster, but I never really knew the extent of the tragedy.  For the young mill workers hoping to earn an honest wage in America, this was a brutally cruel end to their hopes and dreams.

      David Nevins, Sr. lived a long life, becoming a wealthy and generous resident of Methuen, Massachusetts.  The library in town is named after him.  Howe lived a long life too, but seems to have been less generous with his money.  The names of the workers who perished in the mill are long forgotten by history.  But their final moments serve as a stark reminder of what can happen when you stretch the limits of safety in the workplace.

       

    • How’s the Weather?

      Yesterday it was 67 degrees in New Hampshire.  Today it’s 35 degrees.  I drove to Portland, Maine for meetings and was greeted by sleet and snow.  It’s April in New England.

      This isn’t the only place that has extreme swings in the weather, but I don’t live and work in those places.  When I booked meetings in Maine I had 50 degrees and sunny in mind.  Another lesson from Mother Nature.

      In general I don’t mind the weather.  I’d rather not be brushing the snow off my car after a lunch meeting in April, but since I don’t control the weather and chose to honor my meeting, why complain?  Stoic philosophy has a few core principles, and choosing how you react to things is a big one.  So it snows?  So it goes.

    • New England Gold

      This morning I was rowing on my erg in the basement.  As I usually do, I took off my gold wedding ring, did my rowing and then slipped the ring back on.  I was struck first by how cold the ring was when I slipped it back on, but then how quickly heat conducted back into the ring and warmed it back to my body temperature.  Gold is one of the best conductors they say, and this was my own little experiment that proved it.  It makes gold an attractive material for PC boards, but also for jewelry.  I carry to bits of gold with me, the ring on my finger and somewhere deep in my finger a small gold splinter from when I inspected PC boards for Hewlett-Packard as a summer job in college.

      People don’t think of New England as a great place for prospecting for gold.  That’s something you hear about our west, where the mountains are higher and younger and the gold veins run fat and deep.  Not so much in New England, where our mountains are much older and veins of gold aren’t prevalent.  But there have been a few gold strikes in this region that have caused minor rushes.

      Lyman, New Hampshire had a minor gold rush in the middle of the 19th century at the old Paddock Mine.  There are still enthusiasts who hike into the woods there and pan the streams looking for granules of the evasive gold.  As with everything there are those who would invest heavily in the process, and instead of panning for gold they bring motorized dredges into the streams that disrupt the integrity of the stream and create a lot of noise.  New Hampshire allows panning for gold in streams on public land but you can’t bring a shovel into the stream with you to dig out the bed.

      Rhode Island had its own minor gold rush in 1738, but it too proved to be short-lived.  The Durfee Gold Mine in Providence County caused a minor stir at the time, and there are still people looking for gold in that area.  Vermont seems to have some minor gold placers in the Ottauquechee River.  Connecticut has some gold placers in the Farmington River and there will probably be people out there panning for gold in that river this year.  Massachusetts has gold placers in the Deerfield and Westfield Rivers, and likely in other Berkshire rivers that feed the Connecticut River.

      The trick is to actually find the stuff if you’re so inclined.  As with most gold prospecting, you have to ask how much is your time worth?  Time is a priceless commodity, and there’s just not much of a return on investment in panning for gold in a New England river.  It’s a bit too needle in a haystack random to be worthwhile.  Then again, I do buy a lottery ticket once in a while.

    • Matthew Thornton

      Yesterday afternoon I was in Merrimack, New Hampshire between meetings and stopped at a coffee shop for a few minutes.  I passed the Common Man Restaurant, which having dined there I’d remembered as one of the oldest houses in the area.  I thought I’d like to go back to the Common Man to re-acquaint myself with the house.  Glancing across the street, I saw an old graveyard dated from 1742 with a tall monument with a red, white and blue wreath on it.  I almost crossed the busy street to look at it but the timing wasn’t good.  These are places I generally gravitate to and I made a mental note to come back to this spot sometime to get to know those who came before us a bit better.

      This morning I was reading my Kindle app on my iPad and decided to clean out some old screenshots I’d accumulated when reading online articles.  I came across an article on the Ulster-Scots that I’d found interesting and re-read it.  One of the people in the article jumped out to me immediately; Matthew Thornton.  Thornton was an Irish-born signer of the Declaration of Independence, representing New Hampshire.  More interesting.

      Thornton’s family arrived in Boston in 1719 with many other Ulster Scots.  They moved to Wiscasset, Maine (another place I’ve come to know) but fled the area when the Abenaki attacked their settlement and burned their home.  The family moved to Worcester, Massachusetts for some time before Matthew ultimately ended up in Nutfield, New Hampshire in what is now Merrimack.  He served as surgeon during the French and Indian War and participated in the attack on Fort Louisbourg in Cape Breton that changed the course of that war.  Thornton became the first President of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and the Associate Justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire.  In 1776 he was elected to the Continental Congress and made his way to Philadelphia, where he became one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

      Thornton lived in the house that is now the Common Man.  It’s called the Signer’s House to honor him.  He died in 1803 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, but was buried across the street from his home in Merrimack, New Hampshire.  That’s the graveyard that was calling out to me yesterday.  So within 15 hours two random events pointed to the same man; Matthew Thornton.

      Yesterday afternoon I met with a friend of mine who is living along the Souhegan River in Merrimack.  I was struck by the rapids right in the backyard and commented on the Abenaki who probably had the same view, and the early settlers who came across this spot.  I didn’t know at the time that Matthew Thornton probably stood roughly in the same spot several times.  Once again, I’ve been dancing with ghosts…

      Postscript:
      Coincidently, I was driving through Merrimack again hours after I wrote this blog and decided to pull over to visit Matthew.  The monument was built to honor him by the State of New Hampshire, on a lot and foundation given by the town of Merrimack, to honor Thornton.  His gravestone is located roughly 50 yards away from the monument.  It was carved from white marble and flanked by American flags planted in the soil on either side.  His wife is buried to his left, and his sons to his right.  They all face the house that they once lived in.  I wonder which of them was calling to me when I drove by?

       

    • Merrill’s Marauders Bridge

      Route 3 crosses the Souhegan River in Merrimack, New Hampshire.  The bridge that spans the river in this place is called the Merrill’s Marauders Bridge, named after the Army Rangers who volunteered for “a dangerous and hazardous mission” behind enemy lines in Burma in World War Two.  The Rangers were led by Brigadier General Frank Merrill and accomplished some extraordinary things during the war.

      Marching a thousand miles through the jungle, Merrill’s Marauders attacked the flanks of elite, battle-hardened Japanese troops time and again.  This is not unlike the warfare that Roger’s Rangers conducted during the French and Indian War.  The Marauders captured a strategically important airfield called Myitkyina Airfield, disrupted supply lines and generally overcame vastly superior numbers to win critical battles against the Japanese.

      After the war, General Merrill became the Commissioner of Highways for the State of New Hampshire.  Apparently this bridge over the Souhegan River was his favorite in the state, and he and his Marauders are immortalized with the bridge now named for them.  I think Robert Rogers would appreciate it as much as Merrill’s Marauders did.

    • Bearded Bicycle Guy

      I was driving to an appointment when I saw something interesting.  A guy I’ve seen for years riding his bicycle around the town next to mine was standing in a Shaws parking lot with a big green trash bag and a hundred seagulls flying around him excitedly.  The source of their excitement was the bread crumbs flying out of the green bag as he lifted it, shook and twisted it.

      This man is well known in town, and I’ve known him as the bearded bicycle guy who rides up and down the major retail stretch between two towns in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  I’ve assumed he was homeless, but maybe he’s just and avid bicyclist with plenty of time on his hands and a penchant for recycling bottles and cans.  Either way, he’s pretty harmless.  I suppose I could stop and ask him about himself someday, but I’m more likely going to just keep driving.  That probably says more about me than him.  We all have busy lives to live, and stopping my car for a moment to ask an apparent homeless man what his story is seems like more commitment than it’s worth.

      Bearded bicycle guy is different from me, but he wasn’t looking at all concerned about it.  So why should I be?  He’s just another guy marching through time, just like me.  The difference between us this morning is that he was the center of a storm of his own making, as a hundred gulls swirled around him for their feeding.  They obviously knew the drill well, and were as attentive as the gulls that follow a fishing boat as it heads back to shore with the fishermen cleaning the fish throwing scraps over the stern.  And he was clearly enjoying the moment as much as the gulls were.

      I’m not sure who is having a more successful day.  I’ve booked some key meetings, moved some projects forward, caught up with two guys I went to college with, worked out this morning and read a few pages in my book before I went to work.  It’s been a good day.  And yet bearded bicycle guy was having every bit as much fun, perhaps a lot more, than I was.  He may just do the same thing tomorrow too.

    • True North

      Feeling the need to go north.  Far north.  Labrador north.  Iceland north.  Pennan north.  Denmark and Sweden and Finland north.  Viking territory.  Inuit territory.  The kind of places that require commitment to get to.  As spring takes hold in New Hampshire and I’m dreaming of warmer days, I’m also thinking of these places.  Aurora Borealis north.  Tundra north.  Icebergs floating by north.  I blame Jacques for the icebergs, I hadn’t thought of them until he showed me how many were floating around out there.

      I just finished a renovation project in Pocasset.  I’ve checked one box and I’m looking at the bucket list of wanderlust places, and north announces I let another season go by without a visit.  Baseball and crocuses and opening the pool are here, and I’m thinking about going north.  Such is the life of a restless explorer.
      Shelving grand adventures for the moment, spring does bring with it opportunity for exploration locally.  Plenty of old forts and lighthouses and state parks to visit.  Plenty of opportunities for adventure right here in New England and New York.  North will have to wait a bit longer.  But not much longer.

    • The Old Worthen

      The oldest bar in Lowell, Massachusetts is today called The Worthen House.  Back when I was in college it was called The Old Worthen, and that’s still how I like to remember it.  If you walk into the place today you’ll find tables and a long bar that runs front to back.  The bar is essentially the same, but the tables were an addition after a fire gutted the old place.

      They say that Edgar Allen Poe frequented the place and wrote at least some of The Raven here.  More recently, Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg drank at the Old Worthen.  That’s all fine and good, and as a history buff I appreciate those who came before me, but for me the Worthen was our college bar.  I spent my formative drinking years at The Old Worthen, and those memories are locked in my brain more than any class I took in college.

      Taking nothing away from the current place, back in the mid-1980’s The Old Worthen was a bit of a dump.  Wooden booths were jammed with hearty drinkers.  If you asked the bartender they’d give you a knife to carve your name into the walls.  We put away plenty of pitchers of cheap beer back in our day.

      The Old Worthen had a juke box.  For the life of me I can’t remember how many songs that juke box had, but there were five that always seemed to be playing.  My Way by Frank Sinatra, Mercedes Benz by Janis Joplin, Crazy by Patsy Cline, Tainted Love by Soft Cell and the hairspray rock anthem for somebody, Here I Go Again by Whitesnake.  That’s an eclectic mix of songs if I ever saw one.   The songs that were playing were usually determined by which table had the most quarters.  When we ran out of quarters somebody would jump in with hairspray rock.

      They say there’s a ghost on the second floor of the place.  I never saw a ghost in all the time I spent in that building, but then I never did get up to the second floor.  I like to dance with ghosts, as I’ve written about before.  But for me that doesn’t mean some spirit moving the plates around, it’s looking up at the leather belt driven ceiling fans and knowing I was looking at exactly the same thing that Jack and Allan were looking at 30 years before me.  A part of me lives on in the Worthen, as it does for thousands of others who walked through that front door.

      I’ve been back to the Worthen a couple of times over the years since college, but my time there is done.  The Worthen House belongs to the next generation of drinkers.  And just as the experience I had in the 80’s was different from the experience Kerouac had in the 50’s and Poe had in the mid-1840’s when he was living on the second floor, so too the experience is likely different for the generations that have come after me.  But I’m happy that it keeps on going year after year.