Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • Jeffrey Amherst

      The winners get to write the history.  That maxim has dictated what we’ve learned in history books, at church or in the stories told time and again through generations.  Whether its historical perspective, political correctness gone awry or a long overdue reset, there’s no doubt that some of the historical figures of the past are getting re-evaluated over the last decade or so.

      General Robert E Lee, Columbus, Hannah Duston, and Tom Yawkey are some of the historical figures honored in the past who are being re-examined in the present.  Outrage addiction is real, and there are plenty of people who look for anything they can find to be indignant about.  Some people ignore the realities of the situation people were in at the time, like Hannah Duston’s immediate peril should she be discovered escaping that island on the Merrimack River.

      Jeffrey Amherst is a good example of one-time hero being re-examined with the lens of history.  There’s no doubt that Amherst was a man of action trying to win the French and Indian War.  There’s no doubt that the settlers in the region were enduring atrocities at the hands of the Native Americans allied with the French.  But history points out that Amherst is the man that approved giving smallpox-infected blankets to Chief Pontiac’s Ottawa who were wreaking havoc on Fort Pitt and the settlements in Western Pennsylvania.

      In a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet in 1763 Jeffrey Amherst approved of a plan to “to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.” in response to Bouquet’s letter asking for permission to “inocculate the Indians”.  Biological warfare utilized to eliminate a problem during war.  It’s hard to justify the action, but it’s easy to understand if you look at the North American settlers killed and kidnapped over the past 70 years in wars between the French and British.  There were horrors on both sides.

    • Slavery in New Hampshire

      Slavery in New Hampshire

      When I think of New Hampshire, I don’t think about slavery.  Frankly, it’s inconceivable to me that someone would enslave another human being, but it was commonplace in all of the thirteen colonies in the 1600’s until 1865, when it was finally abolished after the Civil War.

      But it surely existed here.  In 1767 there were 187 slaves in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Portsmouth was a hub for the transport of slaves into North America and human beings were bought and sold right on the same streets we walk today.  There are as many as 200 deceased slaves under the streets of Portsmouth around Congress Street who probably died soon after arriving in the city.  Slaves that died on the transport ships were thrown overboard like garbage.

      New Hampshire wasn’t an optimal location for slaves, not because of a moral imperative, but because the land didn’t support farming using slave labor.  It simply wasn’t as profitable here, but it was still cheap enough to justify the act.  Over time, as the Industrial Revolution transformed the region to a manufacturing hub, cheap human labor used in the factories because the norm.  Slavery was pushed to the south, where plantations made slavery economically viable.

      Looking around New Hampshire, it’s not a particularly diverse population.  Perhaps that lack of slave labor meant that when it was finally abolished there simply weren’t many black people living here.  Perhaps its because when these slaves became freed they congregated in communities elsewhere.  Whatever the reason, New Hampshire remains one of the whitest states in the union.

      I’m not at all comfortable writing about slavery.  I’m not a perfect man, but I’m a free man and I can empathize with those who endured the horrors of slavery.  For all the talk of freedom in the years leading up to and after the Revolutionary War, the colonists of the time largely overlooked the plight of those who served them.  Still, there was a growing revulsion towards slavery, and over the one hundred years from when those 187 slaves were in Portsmouth the Americans reached a tipping point where it was outlawed.  Slavery remains a stain on our history, and it’s important to remember that the stain wasn’t just in the south.

    • Choosing a Response

      Choosing a Response

      “Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.” – Victor Frankl

      In a career spent interacting with other people, some who aren’t always pleasant to be around, I’ve come to appreciate this Frankl quote.  In general I work to choose the appropriate response.  And by appropriate I generally mean professional.  I write this with one particularly nasty human being who runs a successful business and happens to be a customer.  He’s taken the opportunity to attack me a couple of times.  I’ve taken the opportunity to never respond to his attacks.  And while I haven’t fired this company as a customer, I have taken steps to replace his business with more pleasant people.

      Life is too short to work for assholes. – Unknown

      I use this one a lot when people ask me about taking certain jobs, or working with certain people.  I’ve applied it in my own career to people who I didn’t like all that much but happened to be working for.  In every one of those cases, we parted ways pretty quickly.  There are four in particular who I won’t ever associate with again.  And until I wrote this I hadn’t even thought about them in some time.  Filed them in the memory dumpster.

      I was listening to a podcast with David Goggins, an ex-Navy SEAL who is famous for putting himself through insane long distance running events, setting pull-up records, and generally for being a tough SOB.  The interviewer stated that he did his best not to get upset about the trolls who commented on his social media feeds.  They both agreed that deleting the comment and blocking the troll was the best thing to do.  Why get upset about someone you don’t know saying something about you?

      This goes for any celebrity, or anyone that contributes anything meaningful to the world.  Haters are gonna hate.  The New England Patriots are about to play in their third straight Super Bowl and the tenth in Tom Brady’s career.  Fans of other teams, and sports writers and commentators who are sick of the same team being in it every year love to tear them down, find controversies, invent scandals, and otherwise act like trolls.  I don’t believe Brady gives a damn what anyone thinks about it at this point in his career, but it must get old having to filter out the haters.

      Perhaps the worst offense of all is the way many of us self-talk to ourselves.  We’re our own worst critics.  This is the stuff that drives growth but can cripple you with self-doubt if you let it.  That’s choosing our response too.  I try to delete the comment and block the troll whenever possible.  Especially when the troll is in my own mind.

    • Sea Smoke

      Sea Smoke

      On especially cold days like the last few, the air temperature is well below the temperature of the ocean.  The differential between the two temperatures causes the water to steam, creating a fog that swirls across the surface of the water.  It’s a beautiful thing to see, even if you don’t want to linger outside too long.

      Similar swirls can be seen on the highway in extreme cold after a snowstorm.  It’s caused when the snow that’s accumulated on cars and trucks breaks off and crashes onto the road surface (and hopefully not your windshield) and this snow is cast about by the wind currents of high speed traffic. This is beautiful for all the wrong reasons (Clean your cars off people!).

      Sea smoke has another couple of interesting names.  Steam fog, which is a great name for a beer, and frost smoke.  But we call it sea smoke around here.  When you see it, you know it’s bloody cold outside.

    • Perspective on the Weather

      Perspective on the Weather

      It’s bitterly cold outside.  Snow boots, winter parka, bomber hat flaps tight to the face when you’re letting the dog out cold.  In general I don’t complain about the weather.  Hell I live in New England and while some call it our birthright, I view it as whining about something you can control.  Don’t like it?  Move to Florida.

      When it gets like this I think about the people who were out in these elements fighting the Revolutionary War or the French & Indian War.  No creature comforts for Colonel Henry Knox and the soldiers in his command as they hauled artillery 300 miles through the wilderness from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston to help free the city from the British siege in the winter of 1775 – 1776.  Nor for Rogers Rangers and slowly starved to death as they evaded the French and Native Americans who were actively hunting for them on lands they knew better.  No reprieve for George Washington and the soldiers hunkered down at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777 – 1778.  I could write another hundred examples but I think you get the point.

      History offers great perspective on what real hardship is.  It isn’t living in the suburbs with a gas furnace and six supermarkets within ten minutes drive and pizza delivery a call away.  No, this isn’t hardship, and I tune out those who complain about it.

    • Ho-Ho-Kus

      In 1698, right about when Hannah Dustin was kidnapped in Haverhill, Massachusetts and eventually escaped back down the Merrimack River, settlers in New Jersey established a permanent home in a community that would eventually be called Ho-Ho-Kus.  As a New Englander, I’d never heard of this town, but I absolutely know some of the people who have come through this community.  Aaron Burr married into the community and lived at the Hermitage.  Other notable visitors included Alexander Hamilton, Benedict Arnold,

      I had a lovely dinner at the Ho-Ho-Kus Inn, which is an old farmhouse that’s been built up over the years to become a highly-regarded restaurant.  Being a visitor to the area, I didn’t know the history of the name, but it clearly originated from Native Americans who lived in this region.  The Borough of Ho-Ho-Kus has an excellent history of the community and provides theories around the name.

      According to the Borough’s site, the origin of the name comes from one of these possible origins:

      it is an Indian word for running water

      it means cleft in the rock or under the rock or hollow rock

      it comes from hohokes signifying the whistle of the wind against the bark of trees

      it is named from the Chihohokies Indians whose chief lived here

      it comes from the Dutch Hoog Akers for high acorns or Hoge Aukers, Dutch for high oaks

      its “Ho” part means joy or spirit and the rest of the name hohokes means a kind of bark of a tree

      it comes from Indian hoccus meaning fox, woakus, gray fox.

      Whatever the original meaning of the name, it’s certainly interesting.  Having worked for a company with a hyphen, and partnering with another company that has a hyphen, I appreciate the commitment of the borough to retain this unique spelling.  It’s one thing to add hyphens when you’re handwriting the name.  It’s quite another to type hyphens into the name. 

      I’ve been to a lot of places in my lifetime.  I’m happy to add Ho-Ho-Kus to that list.  I don’t know which of the origins is correct, but the one that resonates for me is that “Ho” means Joy or spirit, and the rest references bark.  So to me, it makes sense that it would refer to the whistle of the wind through the high oak trees.  I’ve heard that sound myself in other places and find it a joyful noise.  So perhaps the spirits of the ancients are whistling to us as they pass through the oak trees.

    • Tappan Zee

      The longest bridge in New York State from 1955 until it was replaced in 2017 was the Governor Malcolm Wilson Tappan Zee Bridge, or the abbreviated Tappan Zee.  I’ve crossed this bridge countless times, but don’t remember the occasion of the last time I crossed it.  I do know that it was sometime in 2017, when I was working for a company out of Pearl River, New York.  Yesterday they blew up a section of this bridge and let it splash down into the Hudson River.  I happened to be about ten miles away from there when it came down, as I’m working for another company based in nearby Mahwah, New Jersey.  The demolition didn’t take down the entire structure.  There’s still a span that will be dismantled instead of blown up.

      For me the Tappan Zee was the alternative to the George Washington Bridge further downstream for most of my travel from New England to points south.  Mostly that meant New Jersey or Philadelphia, but sometimes it meant trips to Washington, DC or Florida.  Crossing the Hudson is a key part of any travel West or South from New England, and the Tappan Zee was usually the less congested alternative to the GW.  None of this means much really, but for me the trips across the Tappan Zee on my way to the Dad Vail Regatta were particularly meaningful.  I was awestruck the first time I crossed this huge span of the Hudson River, seeing the red cliffs lining the opposite side.  The GW gives you Manhattan views.  The Tappan Zee gives you the mighty Hudson in all its glory.

      The new bridge crosses right next to the location of the older bridge.  It’s a fine thing, and I’m sure it was worth the $4 Billion they spent on it.  Candidly it doesn’t have the same hold on me that the old bridge did.  But I hope it lasts every bit as long as it’s predecessor. 

    • First Light

      First Light

      Dawn comes more slowly in the valley.  I’m in one now in Mahwah, New Jersey.  I’ve watched the sun brighten the sky around us, and the dark shapes of the surrounding hills.  As the sun rises the high points are hit with that first morning light.  I watch a distant house on a hill brighten into a laser reflecting sunlight to my hotel window.  Closer to where I am the hills grow pink as the suns rays cast what warmth it can muster on this frigid day.  The pink glow on the cliffs and trees slowly inch downward until finally, the sun light shines on me, huddled in my car as it warms up and eventually warms me too.  Dawn has come in Mahwah.

    • Up the River

      Up the River

      Reading the history of Henry Hudson, James Cook and other explorers who were looking for the Northwest Passage across North America, I marvel at the logistics of sailing square-rigged ships up rivers like the Hudson River or the St. Lawrence Seaway.  Sailing in narrow corridors with strong currents, questionable winds with the trees and cliffs lining the shores, and no charts to help navigate with, it’s an incredible display of sailing acumen.  I’m in awe that they could do it.

      I’ve sailed up a couple of rivers, most notably the Merrimack River and the Essex River.  In each case I was in a sloop-rigged boat of about 36 feet.  We knew where the channel was, and we had a diesel engine to fall back on should we need it.  That’s a far cry from the Halve Maen (Half Moon in English), Henry Hudson’s ship, which was a square-rigged and 85 feet long.  Hudson sailed up the river that bears his name in September of 1609 with a crew of about 20 men.  They sailed as far as present day Albany before turning around.  Albany would become a hub of trade with the interior over the next 100 years and the river would become well known, but Hudson was essentially sailing with one hand tied behind his back.

      The Basque were exploring North America before Hudson made his voyage into the interior.  I’ve documented previously the adventures of one soul who made it all the way to Rochester, New York before he perished.  The French were also actively exploring the interior, and of course the Spanish were focused on areas farther south on the continent.  All of them exhibited exceptional courage and skill in navigating these waters.  As a casual and occasional weekend sailor I’m deeply impressed with what they were able to accomplish.  Lost to history of course are the many who failed to make it home from these voyages.

    • Tea and Taxes

      Tea and Taxes

      The Boston Tea Party occurred on December 16, 1773 as a way to protest the tax on tea imposed by Parliament.  The colonies were loyal British subjects until a series of intolerable acts drove them away.  Taxation without representation.  No place was more ornery than Boston.  The Boston Massacre took place almost three years earlier as Bostonians protested Parliamentary legislation that imposed hardship on the colonies.

      Much of the taxation was a result of the debts incurred during the French and Indian War.  The Author Walter Borneman floated an interesting what if scenario about the aftermath of the war, when Great Britain gave Guadeloupe, Martinique and Dominica back to the French.  The money from sugar and rum that Great Britain could have realized from those islands could easily have paid for the war and given Parliament less reason to look to the colonies for tax revenue.

      The power of tea in colonial times was significant.  First, it offered a safe way to drink water at a time when cholera and other waterborne diseases were a possibility with every sip.  Boiling water for tea effectively killed the bad stuff before it went into your mouth.  Secondly, tea is made from a mix of leaves from plants that offered medicinal benefits as well.  Tea is full of antioxidants and catechins that help fight diseases and cancers.  And tea has caffeine, which I’m quite familiar with as a net benefit addition to my diet.  The alternative to drinking tea was to drink coffee, which was harder to get in colonial times, or rum, which also killed much of the bad stuff, but wasn’t exactly optimizing the workforce.

      So tea was the magical drink of the time, and it really pissed off the American colonies when some bureaucrat in London imposed taxes on it without giving them a voice in the political process.  Taxation without representation was the gasoline poured on the fire that turned loyalists into rebels.  Colonists were less frequently in mortal peril from the frontier at their backs.  The French had been defeated, the frontier was pushing further and further away from the coastal cities and the threat to day-to-day life evolved more and more to be the Mother Country.