Fat Tuesday

Ted Landphair
Posted March 1st, 2011 at 9:45 am (UTC-4)
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Pigging out on an elaborate Mardi Gras float. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Pigging out on an elaborate Mardi Gras float. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Next Tuesday, New Orleans, Louisiana, will officially shut down for the day.  It has nothing to do with a budget crisis or, let us hope, any sort of calamity.  The occasion is a street party, the biggest in America and one that happens every year.

It isn't just float riders who display alter egos on Mardi Gras. So do thousands of onlookers. (Infrogmation, Flickr Creative Commons)

It isn't just float riders who display alter egos on Mardi Gras. So do thousands of onlookers. (Infrogmation, Flickr Creative Commons)

It’s Mardi Gras — “Fat Tuesday,” translated from the French — a day of wild celebration and excess before Ash Wednesday and the start of the solemn Christian Lenten season that leads up to Easter.  “Take your burdens to the Mardi Gras/ Let the music wash your soul,” wrote songwriter Paul Simon.  All of the day’s revelry and make-believe are one reason New Orleans calls itself “The Big Easy” and “The City that Care Forgot.”

Fat Tuesday is the culmination of Carnival season, in which parades and festive costume balls take place in the midst of normal life — if there is such a thing in the Crescent City (named for a big bend in the wide Mississippi River that courses through town).

Fact is, there are more parades and festivals in New Orleans than there are days in the year.  At least there used to be, before the city lost about a third of its population to death and departures in catastrophic Hurricane Katrina [1] in 2005.

This could be your attorney and your physician in disguise. (Carol M. Highsmith)

This could be your attorney and your physician in disguise. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Come next Tuesday, forget about getting any work done.  Banks, post offices, courts, and every city department save for police and fire will be shut tight.  So will be most businesses, unless they’re selling po-boy and muffaletta sandwiches, cooking up red beans and rice, or hawking Mardi Gras souvenirs to the tourists.

All day and into the night, the city’s old, oak-lined streets will be jammed with revelers, including hundreds of thousands of long-distance tourists as well as out-of-towners from the Gulf Coast region.  Along the St. Charles Avenue parade route Uptown, families will have staked out blanket and cookout space on the “neutral ground” where New Orleans’s classic streetcars usually run. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American Cities and Towns

Thoughtful Jeff; Windier City

Ted Landphair
Posted February 24th, 2011 at 1:54 pm (UTC-4)
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A few days shy of 210 years ago, on March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson became the first president of the United States to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C. The country’s first president, George Washington, had taken the oath of office in New York City, and John Adams, the second chief executive, swore fealty to the Constitution in Philadelphia. Each of these cities had served as the national capital until the District of Columbia — the “D.C.” part of Washington, D.C. — was ready for occupancy by the federal government.

It was through Jefferson’s own work that the new capital city was where it was. The Virginian won its “southern” location, carved out of Virginia and Maryland, by extracting a promise from southern states that they would help pay the Revolutionary War debts of all former colonies.

This painting depicts the U.S. Capitol right about the time Jefferson took his presidential oath for the first time. The building was just eight years old and bears little resemblance to the domed landmark of today. (Library of Congress)

This painting depicts the U.S. Capitol right about the time Jefferson took his presidential oath for the first time. The building was just eight years old and bears little resemblance to the domed landmark of today. (Library of Congress)

For his inauguration, Jefferson traveled four days to reach Washington. He rented a room in a boarding house in the Georgetown area of the city and walked to the Capitol from his room on the day of his inauguration.

Let me say that again. He WALKED to the Capitol — just strolled over to take the oath of office in the Senate chamber of the Capitol, a building that was not yet completed. That’s a pretty good six-kilometer hike, let me tell you. By all accounts, Jefferson walked alone. No mention is made of escorts. Certainly no security detail or protective rooftop snipers.

That befits Jefferson, who, though a Virginia patrician and one of the nation’s most brilliant statesmen and writers, was a man of the people. It was he, after all, who penned the Declaration of Independence and its historic assertion of that “self-evident truth,” “that all men are created equal.”

Jean-Leon Gerome Ferris's painting depicts Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson with the new Declaration of Independence. (Library of Congress)

Jean-Leon Gerome Ferris's painting depicts Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson with the new Declaration of Independence. (Library of Congress)

He was, by the way, 33 years old when he wrote what is perhaps America’s most famous document.

For his first inaugural ─ he would ride a horse to his second ─ Jefferson wore plain, dark clothing, without any distinctive badges of office. This was in contrast to his predecessors, who had dressed elegantly and worn ceremonial swords for their swearings-in.

It was Jefferson, too, who, as president, would join a crowd trying to save three men swept up in the current of springtime flooding and clinging to sycamore branches, right on Pennsylvania Avenue. “Mr. Jefferson felt such anxiety for these unfortunate men,” reported Christian Hines, an early Washington resident, “that he offered fifteen dollars for each person saved, and the use of his horse to anyone who would make the venture to rescue them, but no one attempted it, and [the trapped men] had to remain in their unenviable positions all night.”

So Jefferson was a resourceful fellow. He once surveyed much of what is now Virginia and set an “exact description of the limits and boundaries of the state” in 1781. But those borders were inexact out west. They stretched far across the Appalachian Mountains and onward to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Thus the early commonwealth was one-third larger than its former motherland’s islands of Great Britain and Ireland.

Kentucky 'Horse Country' was part of Virginia originally. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Kentucky 'Horse Country' was part of Virginia originally. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Large enough that its western region would be broken off to create Kentucky, the nation’s 15th state.

These days, Jefferson’s name resounds throughout ancestor-worshipping Virginia. Veteran statehouse observers are hard-pressed to recall the last important political speech in the Old Dominion that did not invoke Jefferson’s words. From my middle daughter Juliette’s graduate-school days at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, I remember laughing about its self-admiring references to “Mr. Jefferson’s University.”

It was his, in a sense. The two-term former U.S. president founded it in 1819. I swear you see more Jefferson statues and inscriptions and images than you do Cavalier gear and logos. (The school’s sports teams are the Cavaliers.) Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American History

Light and LOL

Ted Landphair
Posted February 17th, 2011 at 2:21 pm (UTC-4)
13 comments

You’ve seen those cartoons in which a light bulb with rays bursting outward appears above someone’s head.

New ideas shed light on a situation.

New ideas shed light on a situation.

It represents an idea, usually a new and brilliant one!  And sometimes we hear certain people described as “dim bulbs,” meaning they’re not terribly bright.

But can such metaphors work once the gaudy, porcelain-white glow from today’s halogen, fluorescent, and LED (“light-emitting diode”) bulbs lights up the globe?  How can you fit a bright, new cartoon thought into a spiral-shaped CFL (compact fluorescent) idea bubble? And I thought the CFL was a football league.

'Opto-electronics' means op to no good!

'Opto-electronics' means op to no good!

These new lights, pasty-white in the main, have all been created by something called “opto-electronics.”  Scary.

How many (fill in here) does it take to change one of those day-glo-white CFLs?  If you’re talking about me, the answer is one — as fast as I can.  Give me the warm, yellowy glow of an old-fashioned, Thomas Edison-inspired incandescent, not something that gives your office the ambience of an emergency room.

My last motel room.

My last motel room.

Cheapskate motel chains have gladly replaced cozy bedside bulbs with chalky high-tech ones.  The room has all the warmth of a crypt.  But the housekeepers still put a mint under your headstone.  Or stand beneath one of today’s pallid street lights — humming menacingly — and watch cats and children run screaming.  No wonder.  They make you look like an extra in “The Night of the Living Dead.”

Like those street lights, many new and “improved” bulbs take their sweet time turning on.  They’re not “warming up.” The bulbs are cool — clammy, if you ask me — to the touch.  Prodded by Carol, my efficiency expert, I put one in a socket next to our garden and turned it on at dusk.  Roosters were crowing before the thing gave off enough light to reveal the possum eating our petunias.  Made him look ghastly, too.

Note the cozy, comforting glow of the new bulbs.

Note the cozy, comforting glow of the new bulbs.

I guess you can tell by now that I’m not a fan of these cool, pale lightbulbs.  And I see from news reports that I’m not alone. With a mandated phase-out of incandescent bulbs, beginning with 100-watt varieties next year, people across America are stockpiling the things!

Incandescents’ days are numbered because governments around the world have ordered manufacturers to get with the CFL and halogen program in the name of efficiency. Compact flourescents are said to use as much as 75 percent less electricity than the old filament bulbs.  Or is it 125 percent? 2,900 percent?  All kinds of data have been marched out to promote the new lighting technology.  Unscrewing the old and screwing in the new saves energy, we’re assured.  You’re helping the planet cut down on greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s funny, the only bulbs I’ve seen in greenhouses are fluorescents or heat lamps.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Business, Industry and Economics

Town Meetings and the Devil

Ted Landphair
Posted February 15th, 2011 at 2:17 pm (UTC-4)
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The image of New Englanders — the folks who live in America’s northeast corner — is one of people who don’t talk a lot. Stoic, quiet types who keep their thoughts to themselves. You’re lucky if you can get an old-time New Englander to say “ay-yup” or “nope.”

Talking's not all that goes on at Warren's town meeting. There's a lot of listening, too. (Courtesy, The Valley Reporter)

Talking's not all that goes on at Warren's town meeting. There's a lot of listening, too. (Courtesy, The Valley Reporter)

But one day a year, the citizens of villages, towns, and mid-sized cities gather in town halls and school auditoriums to talk-talk-talk — sometimes all morning, all afternoon, even late into the night. It’s as if reticent New Englanders save up all their thoughts — about all sorts of things — and get them off their chests on a single day.

Sometimes called “the purest and most democratic form of participatory government,” town meetings are literally open to anyone and everyone in town. It’s a tradition that dates to colonial times more than 235 years ago. As Jeremy Perkins notes on the suite101.com Web site:

The first recorded gathering of voters in America took place in Dorchester, [Massachusetts] in 1633. According to the Dorchester Athenaeum online  . . . . the gist of this historic first was that the townsmen, by vote, agreed to meet at regular intervals to see to the “good and well ordering of the affayres of the Plantation.” Soon after, the greater Boston area had begun adopting the process.

And it spread across New England from there.

Here's an idea of how tranquil Warren looks in this quintessential New England scene. (The Valley Reporter)

Here's an idea of how tranquil Warren looks in this quintessential New England scene. (The Valley Reporter)

The traditional date of the town meeting on the first Tuesday of March was chosen because the region’s fierce winter usually moderates a bit by then, and farmers in the area who didn’t see each other often could come because the crops weren’t yet in the field. But bigger communities now often schedule town meetings for an evening or a Saturday, knowing that not everyone can get a weekday away.

Residents of towns such as Warren, Vermont, near the big Sugarbush ski resort in the Green Mountains, get the following notice in the mail:

WARNING FOR TOWN MEETING. RESIDENTS WHO ARE LEGAL VOTERS ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED AND WARNED TO MEET.

Not invited . . . warned!  These folks take town meetings seriously. Warren has no mayor; it’s led by five “select board” members — they used to be called “selectmen” until a woman got elected. They and other town officials must get up, explain their plans, and defend their record before the whole town — not as Republicans or Democrats but as neighbors charged with running the place. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American Regions

Out of Mothballs

Ted Landphair
Posted February 10th, 2011 at 12:27 pm (UTC-4)
4 comments

Almost 13 years ago on a Sunday, I walked into a surreal urban setting that reminded me of one of those science-fiction movie scenes in which everything looks normal but there’s not a human being in sight.

Once a stable, this became the engineering unit’s headquarters building at the facility I’m about to describe. (Chris Hatch, U.S. Navy Naval Ship Systems Engineering Station)

Once a stable, this became the engineering unit’s headquarters building at the facility I’m about to describe. (Chris Hatch, U.S. Navy Naval Ship Systems Engineering Station)

There were manicured lawns and old, beautifully kept red-brick buildings, something like a college campus without the students. Or the professors. Or anyone at all. You could still see machinery inside industrial buildings through windows that were perfectly intact. It was as if the workers had switched off their machines, gone home, and never come back. Or been vaporized.

In a word: spooky!

And it got eerier, because straight ahead of me appeared about 30 giant U.S. Navy warships in battle gray — including a huge battleship and two even larger aircraft carriers, rising and falling ever so slightly on the Delaware River tide. Once again, without a person to be seen on them or ashore.

This all took place in Philadelphia, a great industrial city that once made everything from saws to locomotives to many of those ships.

This is Carol’s shot of what I saw in the Delaware River when I visited the Naval Shipyard. Check out what’s in the distance. (Carol M. Highsmith)

This is Carol’s shot of what I saw in the Delaware River when I visited the Naval Shipyard. Check out what’s in the distance. (Carol M. Highsmith)

The locale was what was then called the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, which, just eight or nine years earlier, had been Philadelphia’s largest manufacturer. More than 40,000 people at a time once worked there, building mighty ships.

So you can imagine that in 1991, when the government ordered several American military bases closed to save money — and this shipyard was announced as one to be severely curtailed within four years — it was a shocking and sad time for the nation’s fifth-largest city.

My surreal visit occurred after the place had been all but cleared out, with the weekends just about unstaffed.

In a bit, I’ll tell you what happened then, but first some essential background.

Pennsylvania Colony was founded in 1682 by Quakers, including William Penn, for whom it was named. Though pacifists, these folks did not miss the military significance of the location of the colony’s principal city, Philadelphia, along the deep but fresh water of the Delaware River, upstream from the ocean and away from easy attack by foreign powers.

In the mid-1700s, colonial leader — and later revolutionary conspirator — Benjamin Franklin obtained financing for two gun batteries on the river in the borough of Southwark in what is now South Philadelphia. One of them would later become the site of Philly’s first Navy Yard. Private shipbuilders set up shop on the waterfront as well, turning out huge merchant ships.

James Fuller Queen’s painting shows quite a scene on the Delaware River. Imagine how much livelier summertime would have been. (Library of Congress)

James Fuller Queen’s painting shows quite a scene on the Delaware River. Imagine how much livelier summertime would have been. (Library of Congress)

As the American Revolution was coming to a boil in 1775, Franklin and others found the funding to convert several merchant ships into the rebellious colonists’ first warships. The British seized Philadelphia and all its shipyards, but only for about a year before being driven from town. Once the colonists’ victory was achieved and a nation was formed following the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the new United States moved military shipbuilding to Boston.

Philadelphia continued to build big merchant ships, however, as well as a class of government vessels called “revenue cutters” used to collect customs duties. But after Barbary pirates attacked U.S. merchant and naval vessels off the coast of Algeria as the 19th Century dawned, demands for a stronger Navy grew.  And they intensified with the coming of civil war and the need for fresh water on which to build and store the new iron-hulled warships — rusting being a serious problem in salt water.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American Cities and Towns, American History

Generation ZZZ

Ted Landphair
Posted February 4th, 2011 at 4:11 pm (UTC-4)
1 comment

Last summer, I told you about a challenging retreat that some of us at VOA attended.  The subject was the “convergence” of many media in the world of journalism, and how we might keep up with it.  No longer are the consumers of our information relying on traditional newspapers, radio, and television alone.  Not only are you learning about the world around you — instantaneously — from your computers and handheld devices, but you’re interacting with each other, and with us, as never before.

Keeping pace with all this and meeting your increased expectations takes nimble journalists, able to work in today’s many media “platforms.”

That’s why I titled that blog “Ch-ch-change.”

And it is rarely easy.  When the 20 or so of us met, our facilitator asked us to identify obstacles to change.  I wasn’t the only one who was astonished to see that, by the time we were done, we’d come up with 168 different ones!

A growing generation gap at many worksites, yes. But maybe not this stark. (xflickrx, Flickr Creative Commons)

A growing generation gap at many worksites, yes. But maybe not this stark. (xflickrx, Flickr Creative Commons)

I want to reflect on one in particular, because it’s a phenomenon that’s more and more prevalent in workplaces across the nation: Tension between old and young workers.

Over our 69 years, VOA has had a veteran staff, by and large, as most of our staff pictures would attest.  Many people had already compiled distinguished service in news organizations domestically and around the world.

And we tend to stay and stay and stay.  We give out 20- and 25-year service pins like Band-aids at a blood bank.  I know one service chief who’s been at his desk for 40 years.

But as we have rapidly moved more and more out of shortwave radio into television and “new media” such as this Web log, we have brought on board an armada of bright, talented, ambitious young writers, reporters, producers, and tech whizzes of all descriptions.  They have done remarkable work and livened the place up.  And these whippersnappers trip merrily among the various media with the greatest of ease and enthusiasm.

The same cannot always be said for us old salts, to whom change can be threatening and seem daunting.  Remember the word “nimble” that I used when describing the journalist of today.  Nimbleness, mental or physical, is not the first skill you’d attribute to many “seniors.”

Yup, our old, trusty work devices are now in museums. (Mulad, Flickr Creative Commons)

Yup, our old, trusty work devices are now in museums. (Mulad, Flickr Creative Commons)

Yet we of all people should know from experience that change is not that scary and quite often makes our work lives easier.  When I was first shown computer writing programs, I hugged my typewriter and muttered that the new contraption would be the death of me.  Now I relish the chance to move whole paragraphs around, make a word italic or boldface on command, and send the finished product anywhere in the world that I choose.  The typewriter is now a historical curiosity, displayed at home next to an old ice box and a Victrola.

If you don’t know what a Victrola is, you’re in the “whippersnapper” category mentioned above.  Of course, you don’t know what a “whippersnapper” is, either.

Fact is, there’s a growing generation gap in America. Not the one between kids and parents, but a chasm between young hotshots and aging geezers on the job.

According to report after report, an acute shortage of skilled labor is prompting employers to lure millions of older people back into the workplace after long, successful careers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in Business, Industry and Economics, Social Issues

The (Fill in Here) City

Ted Landphair
Posted February 2nd, 2011 at 3:36 pm (UTC-4)
2 comments

After today I will, I think, have the “nickname thing” out of my system. I’ve told you about various state nicknames, such as “The Buckeye State” (Ohio) and “The Volunteer State” (Tennessee). And about the exuberant, often animal-related nicknames that colleges and universities have attached to their sports teams, such as “Wolverines” (University of Michigan) and “Banana Slugs” (University of California, Santa Cruz).

You’d never guess in a million years that this is a billiken. (St. Louis University)

You’d never guess in a million years that this is a billiken. (St. Louis University)

An interesting one that I overlooked is “Billikens,” the nickname of the teams from St. Louis University. I kind of thought that a “billiken” might be a takeoff on pelican ─ a bird with a prominent, low-hanging bill. Turns out, a billiken was an early 20th-Century collectible statue or charm doll, sometimes turned into a penny bank, that looked like a cross between a chubby baby and a “laughing Buddha” figurine.  Exactly how this became SLU’s mascot is too tortuous a story for now.

Having already devoted an entire posting to “America’s Icebox” ─ which the city of International Falls, Minnesota, proudly calls itself ─ I want to polish off my nickname splurge with a listing of unusual nicknames and slogans given to other U.S. towns and cities ─ including a few unflattering ones most certainly created without the communities’ blessing.

Also called the “Crescent City” for a big bend where the Mississippi River flows through town, N’awlins, as I like to call it, is the “Big Easy,” too, for sure. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Also called the “Crescent City” for a big bend where the Mississippi River flows through town, N’awlins, as I like to call it, is the “Big Easy,” too, for sure. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Some civic nicknames are legendary. New York is “The Big Apple,” a term first applied to the city by horseracing enthusiasts and jazz musicians. Las Vegas, Nevada, is “Sin City,” whether it likes it or not. (These days, it does. Other times it likes to think of itself as family-friendly.)  New Orleans ─ and I can attest to this after five easygoing years there ─ is “The Big Easy.” Other familiar and apt ones: Pittsburgh: “The Steel City”; Detroit: “The Motor City”; Chicago: “The Windy City”; and Honolulu: “The Big Pineapple!”

Here are lots more that may tickle your fancy. I made up categories for them:

 Something to be Proud Of, All Right

• “Clam Town” ─ Cordova, Alaska

• “Crossroads of Rhode Island” ─ Warwick, Rhode Island

• “Geographic Center of Connecticut” ─ Berlin, Connecticut

• “Hanging Basket Capital of the World” ─ Anchorage, Alaska

• “Hubcap Capital of the World” ─ Pearsonville, California

 

 Well Isn’t That Special, Too!

• “Brick Capital of the World” ─ Malvern, Arkansas

• “The Carpet Capital of the World” ─ Dalton, Georgia

• “The City of Bright Tomorrows” ─ Eustis, Florida

• “City of Youth and Ambition” ─ Fallbrook, California

• “City With a Future” (and it’s a good thing) ─ Lansing, Kansas

• “The Golden Heart City” ─ Fairbanks, Alaska

• “Home of the Catfish Stomp” ─ Elgin, South Carolina

•“Hummingbird Capital of the United States” ─ Sierra Vista, Arizona

• “A Moral Seaside Resort” (assuredly NOT an “Amoral” one) ─ Ocean City, New Jersey 

• “Underwear Capital of the World” ─ Knoxville, Tennessee

• “Prune Capital of the World” ─ Yuba City, California

I can see why the garlic ice cream would be free at Gilroy, California’s, annual Garlic Festival. Would YOU pay for a scoop? (besighyawn, Flickr Creative Commons)

I can see why the garlic ice cream would be free at Gilroy, California’s, annual Garlic Festival. Would YOU pay for a scoop? (besighyawn, Flickr Creative Commons)

The “Golden State” is also home to many other fruit-and-veggie “world capitals,” including Lima Bean (Oxnard), Horseradish** (Tulelake), Artichoke (Castroville), Almond (Chico), Olive (Corning), Garlic (Gilroy), Carrot (Holtville), Cherry (Linden), Tokay Grape (Lodi), Flower Seed (Lompoc), Blackberry (McCloud), and Strawberry (Watsonville). **Collinsville, Illinois, also calls itself the “Horseradish Capital of the World.”  Someone with a cast-iron stomach should pick a winner.

Doubt You Have Any Competitors

• “America’s Canary City” ─ Aspen, Colorado

• “Barbecued Mutton Capital of the World” ─ Owensboro, Kentucky

• “The City Built Inside a Meteor Crater” ─ Middlesboro, Kentucky Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American Cities and Towns, Miscellany and Whimsy

Mama — and Papa — Grizzlies

Ted Landphair
Posted January 31st, 2011 at 6:40 pm (UTC-4)
1 comment

Most likely, I don’t have to tell you who Sarah Palin is.

The former Alaska governor and unsuccessful 2008 U.S. vice-presidential candidate, who is now a prominent voice in the conservative Tea Party movement, is one of America’s most famous — and controversial – women.

Sorry, I just told you who Sarah Palin is.

Some people love her. Some people loath her for her take-no-prisoners approach to politics. No wonder she calls herself — and select other female candidates who meet her ferocity test — “Mama Grizzlies.” 

Whatever you think of Palin, you have to admire her choice in nicknames.

Cute and cuddly, right? Cute, maybe. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Cute and cuddly, right? Cute, maybe. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The grizzly bear — which got its name from white tips on its fur that give it an aged or “grizzled” look — is not so lovable. A grizzly is not to be trifled with. To give you an idea, its Latin scientific name is Ursus arctos horribilis — “horrible north bear”!

The great beast can weigh more than 300 kilograms, stand 3½ meters tall on its back paws, and chase down even the fastest human. You certainly wouldn’t want to bump into one — especially a sow protecting cubs — in the deep woods. That’s why smart hikers whistle while they walk, clap loudly, or even drape themselves in bells.

Bear to human: “What you lookin’ at, bud?” That’s your cue to roll over and play dead. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Bear to human: “What you lookin’ at, bud?” That’s your cue to roll over and play dead. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

“About 99 percent of the time, you’ll never see a bear,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Chris Servheen tells me. “It’ll just run away.”

Yes, but what about the other 1 percent of the time?

Ah, Servheen says, reassuringly, that’s the time to whip out your powerful “bear spray,” which is an intense formulation of pepper spray that will disable even a charging bear long enough for you to escape.

Anyway, grizzlies are anything but man-killers, let alone man-eaters, unless they’re sick or desperately hungry. (It’s those exceptions that keep cropping up that make me nervous). Loners, they steer clear of humans. Before word spread among veteran campers in the Great Northwest — and who else would pitch a tent in “bear country”— that securing one’s food in camp is a good idea, hungry bears would occasionally maul or kill humans in the process of rummaging through tents.

The fact is that grizzlies eat mostly berries, grubs, and the occasional animal carcass. If they’re hungry enough, they’ll also run down a newborn elk or moose or lagging bison, but most in those herds can easily outrun any bear. Grizzlies are, Chris Servheen told me, “inefficient predators.”

Somehow, I’m still not convinced. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American Regions, Science and Technology

First Beach

Ted Landphair
Posted January 28th, 2011 at 3:13 pm (UTC-4)
4 comments


America has a First Family, a First Lady, a First State, the First Man on the Moon . . . and a First Beach.

Or more precisely, its first beach resort, which is still going strong.

I should pause before identifying it to tell you why in the world I’m talking about beaches when it’s the middle of winter at my writing perch.

I’m thinking “beach” and “warm” precisely because I just wrote about “America’s Icebox” — International Falls, Minnesota. And because I just spent four hours shoveling snow and dragging away fat tree limbs that the snow brought down. Also because I just visited this First Beach via a ferry ride from the Delaware Shore, where my son lives.

This should give you a clue that the beach I have in mind is not one of the “beautiful people” shorelines in Florida, as it would take that ferry a week to chug all the way south to Palm Beach or Miami Beach, if it made it at all.

In its heyday, Atlantic City’s Steel Pier (steel and concrete, actually) held up to 80,000 sun and fun-worshippers. Novelty acts in the amusement area included a famous “diving horse.” (Library of Congress)

In its heyday, Atlantic City’s Steel Pier (steel and concrete, actually) held up to 80,000 sun and fun-worshippers. Novelty acts in the amusement area included a famous “diving horse.” (Library of Congress)

The First Beach began operations about 140 years ago, when the American tradition of heading to the shore to relax was just catching on. You might be thinking Atlantic City, New Jersey. After all, you can collect whole drawers full of 1900-vintage picture postcards showing a packed Atlantic City boardwalk, crowded Royal Palace and Breakers hotels, and amusement-filled Steel Pier.

Nope. It’s not Atlantic City. But you’re in the right state.

America’s first seaside resort was Cape May, which sits on the tip of a little peninsula that sticks down into the mouth of the Delaware Bay at the very bottom of New Jersey on the Mid-Atlantic Coast. It’s that bay across which that ferry putters from Delaware.

The Delaware Bay, in turn, narrows into a river of the same name that wiggles up to what was, for many decades, America’s largest city — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Ship captains would stop at Cape May to pick up local pilots for the sail up the treacherous Delaware. “The wind it blew from sou-sou-east, it blew a mighty breeze,” goes an old sea shanty.

The man upon the look cried, “A light upon our lee”

They reported to the captain. These words he did say:

“Cheer up, me jolly sailor lads. It’s the light on old Cape May.”

Life was good, and leisurely, on the piazza of the Hotel Cape May in 1909. (Library of Congress)

Life was good, and leisurely, on the piazza of the Hotel Cape May in 1909. (Library of Congress)

Many of those captains fell in love with the place and built homes there. And as Philadelphia, upriver, became congested, wealthy citizens who looked for a cool, relaxing place to get away joined them in Cape May, which is named after Dutch sea captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey.

Cape May was also a favorite seasonal haunt of rich southern planters, who traveled north to escape the sweltering heat of summer. That’s one reason you see so many grand, plantation-style mansions in Cape May — all sporting columns and verandas. (Mint juleps are harder to find, however.) Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American Cities and Towns, Geography, Travel and Tourism

Head Scratchers

Ted Landphair
Posted January 26th, 2011 at 7:37 pm (UTC-4)
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Normally I’m an organized Virgo of the sort who might alphabetize the soup cans in his pantry. So when I travel across country or just around town on the subway, you’d think I’d keep a neat notebook at hand, ready to jot down odd thoughts as they come to me. I have no such notebook, or any filing cards, but instead grab the closest scrap of paper. This ends up in the bag that also contains my lunch, bus schedules, checkbook, umbrella, cache of peanuts for the squirrels, and galoshes, just in case they’re right about an impending afternoon snow.

Despite what lyrics to a popular song tell you, 1 is not the loneliest number THIS year. (jontintinjordan, Flickr Creative Commons)

Despite what lyrics to a popular song tell you, 1 is not the loneliest number THIS year. (jontintinjordan, Flickr Creative Commons)

Making room for those galoshes the other day, I was astounded to find four such bits of paper onto which I had written, in what looked like spy code, “1-11-11,” “Intl. Falls,” “Ok PH,” and “N-Mich.”  You can imagine how long it took me to remember what each of THOSE meant.

It has all come back to me, I am pleased to report, and there’s a decent tale behind each scribble.

1-11-11

Early this year, a lot of people with time on their hands – and numerology on their minds — made a big deal out of this year’s many conjunctions of 1s. January 1st, for instance, was a date written as 1-1-11, and the 11th — 1-11-11 — was even more repetitive. A lot of 1s are getting played in lotteries across the nation, since we’ll also be seeing a 11-1-11, and the biggie: 11-11-11.  After that, it will be a long wait until 2-22-22 in 2022.

And here’s what’s prompting titters of joy among numerologists and lovers of the number 1: Write down the last two numerals of the year you were born. Say it was 1979. Write “79.”  Add the age you will reach, or have already reached, in 2011. That would be 32. No matter what numbers you put down, the total will be 111.

This has nothing to do with “Ted Landphair’s AMERICA,” I know. But it says something about Ted Landphair! Though my youngest grandchildren have no word for it, they take their index fingers and circle them around their right ears. It’s a gesture that means, “He’s loco.”

Intl. Falls

I scribbled these words last Friday morning, when I heard on the radio that the temperature at dawn that day in International Falls, Minnesota, was -43 °C (-45 °F), a record for that town of 12,000 shivering stalwarts along the Canadian border.

This is not the official seal of International Falls, but an artist could turn it into one. (Nicholas Doumani, Flickr Creative Commons)

This is not the official seal of International Falls, but an artist could turn it into one. (Nicholas Doumani, Flickr Creative Commons)

International Falls had already boasted for decades about being “the Icebox of America.” It even fought, and won, a long patent dispute with little Fraser, Colorado, one-thirteenth its size, for the right to market that name.

Pride is one thing, but REALLY, why would anyone want to live in a place where the average January temperature is -16.3 °C (2.7 °F). How must it feel to be the model that the long-running “Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle” television cartoon show parodied as “Frostbite Falls”?

As you might imagine, the locals — who were no doubt huddled together for warmth on the other end of the phone when I called them — make the best of it. “We’re a winter playground,” one woman told me, tongue not frozen in cheek. “The ice fishing is superb.” The town’s promotional materials cut quickly to its magnificent lakes, terrific grouse hunting, piney Voyageurs National Park, and huge international rail port of entry — the second-busiest in all of North America, by gum!

City Administrator Rod Otterness was quick to tell me about the annual, spirited tug-of-war contest with a bunch of Canadians on Rainy Lake, which separates the two nations. It’s held in July, when the average high temperature is 26 °C (70 °F).  Winter?  What winter?

It seemed for a time that people wanted to cut down ALL the trees in northern Minnesota. But quite a few remain for this plant to shape and grind. (lirena, Flickr Creative Commons)

It seemed for a time that people wanted to cut down ALL the trees in northern Minnesota. But quite a few remain for this plant to shape and grind. (lirena, Flickr Creative Commons)

People hang in, it seems, for the small-town lifestyle and values, outdoorsy life, and steady jobs at a big paper mill and elsewhere.

Rod Otterness had escaped the Icebox early this month to spend two toasty weeks in the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta. His return flight through Minneapolis, on the very day when the thermometer hit -43°, was delayed 4½ hours. Why?  Because the same airplane had begun the day in International Falls, where it had to be towed to a hangar to thaw out over several hours before being warm and mechanically safe enough to take off.

No wonder, when I asked Otterness what one calls a person from International Falls (a Fallsian?), he replied, “An ice cube.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted in American History, American Regions, Geography, Travel and Tourism

Ted Landphair

About

By admin on April 13, 2010

This is a far-ranging exploration of American life by a veteran Voice of America “Americana” reporter and essayist.

Ted writes about the thousands of places he has visited and written about as a broadcaster and book author. Ted Landphair’s America often showcases the work of his wife and traveling companion, renowned American photographer Carol M. Highsmith.

Ted welcomes feedback, questions, and ideas. View Ted’s profile. Watch a video about Ted and Carol by VOA’s Nico Colombant.

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