New Jersey Pine Barrens

I first spent time in the New Jersey Pine Barrens over twenty years ago. For a period of about ten years, we used to spend a few days each summer at a shore town near the Pine Barrens, so I was able to get to know and love the Pine Barrens. For various reasons, our time in the Pine Barrens has been limited to a day trip here and there, but my love for the Pine Barrens has not diminished.

I want to set the stage for my posts on the NJ Pine Barrens with a brief discussion of different designations for the Pine Barrens. What do I mean by different designations? Ok, I’ll try to keep this simple. The federally designated Pinelands National Reserve covers about 1,719 square miles or 1.1 million acres. In 1981, the New Jersey State Legislature designated a smaller area of 1,460 square miles (934,000 acres) as the Pinelands Area, managed by the NJ Pinelands Commission. These two smaller delineations sit within the larger historical area that many in New Jersey still refer to as the Pine Barrens (2,250 square miles or 1.4 million acres). As I write this paragraph, I would like to mention a book that I am currently (re)reading about the NJ Pine Barrens from which I got these numbers as well as some maps that I am referring to as I am writing this.

For online viewing, the New Jersey Pinelands Commission has a Geographic Information Systems webpage with links to various maps, including this map which also includes the area included in the Pinelands National Reserve (PNR). If you go the PNR website, http://www.nps.gov/pine/ and click on the view map link near the top of the page, you will get a really cool map of the PNR that you can manipulate using online controls. If you do not already have it, I believe that you will need to download the freely available adobe flash player (v.9) in order to view this map.

Protecting the New Jersey Pinelands: A New Direction in Land–Use Management. 1988. Beryl Robichaud Collins and Emily W. B. Russell, editors. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.

As some of you are no doubt aware, there is a story behind the federal and state designations that I have referred to above. A brief history of the Pine Barrens including a timeline may be found here.

Conserving the Everglades

Wow.


Speaking of conserving the Everglades, yes there is plan to the restore the Everglades, known as the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). There is a website that you can go to for information on the CERP, here.

And the site referenced in the above link, Everglades Plan, has a wonderful exposition on why we should restore the Everglades. It is a nicely written, multi-part piece that is easy to read. Please go and check it out.

Finally, Everglades Plan website has a FAQ page, a learn and teach page, news and events, etc.

Don't forgot about the group that Marjory Stoneham Douglas started, the Friends of the Everglades.

I want to put a plug in for the staff of the Everglades National Park (ENP), I had the privilege of talking to a couple of staff from the ENP when I was doing my research all those years ago as well as going on an ENP staff lead tour. All ENP staff that I spoke to were committed to conserving and preserving the Everglades.

Everglades History

I want to say something about the history of the Everglades. And yes, I could post something in my own words, based on the work I did on the Everglades in graduate school all those years ago. I still may, but not today.

Even when and if I do, I would want to point you to some information that you yourself can look at online. So, I am starting with a culture and history page from the Everglades National Park Service's website. Here you will find four links:

1. native peoples.

2. pioneer settlement.

3. development in the Everglades.

4. conservation.

Another brief history of the Everglades may be found here.

I'll point you to some online resources about conserving the Everglades in my next post, so stay tuned!

Everglades: habitats and vegetation

I want to give you with some places you can go to view pictures of the Everglades:

1. vegetation and habit images are from the Everglades Park Service.

2. The Florida Museum of Natural History has this webpage on the Everglades. I have not had a chance to check it out yet, but it looks really cool. I found it about it from the links page of the Friends of the Everglades.

Everglades wildlife

Well, I spent some time yesterday looking through my house for the pictures of the Everglades that I took on my 2001 trip to no avail.

We did see alligators reasonably close up, which means that we saw them in some wetlands from a trail from a safe distance of several feet.

I also recall seeing a couple of herons close up. We had just turned onto one of the dirt roads off of U.S. Rte 41 to drive north. Just after we turned, I saw a couple of herons standing in some water. I stopped the car, at first wanting to try to get a picture. They were pretty close, perhaps 5 to 7 feet away. I decided that this was not one of those photo moments because I did not want to risk having them fly away. Instead, I watched the herons go about there business for a couple of minutes. The image if forever etched in my mind. We drove away after a couple of minutes not wanting to disturb them.

Here are some links where you may go to view Everglades wildlife:

1. A page with wildlife photographs at the Friends of the Everglades webpage, and

2. The Everglades National Park maintains a wildlife image gallery that may be found here.

Visit to the Everglades over Christmas 2001

I had a chance to visit the Everglades over Christmas of 2001. We left early on a Saturday morning and drove to Lorton VA outside Washington D.C. where we caught the over night auto train to Sanford Florida, not far from Orlando. We stayed near Kissimmee, within a stones throw of Disney World and related theme parks. This may sound horrifying to some of you, but we were not all that interested in Disney World and the other theme parks. Rather we spent a quiet day or say at the complex where we stayed. Our plan called for us to leave on the day after Christmas to drive down to the Everglades, staying over night about 30 miles east of Naples. Instead, we called the hotel, added a night onto our stay, and left Christmas day.

The next day was our day in the Everglades. We got on U.S. Rte. 41, that I think may also be referred to as the Tamiami Trail. Our first stop was a tour boat service officially sanctioned by the Everglades National Park Service (ENP). I don't recall the exact nature of the affiliation of this tour boat service with the ENP except that I had the impression that it had some kind of "stamp of approval" from the ENP. It was a little cool for Florida and windy, so we were glad that we had some light jackets aka windbreakers with us. We spent about one hour touring around the islands and the water ways near Everglades City. I was awestruck. I have pictures from our day in the Everglades, but they are not digital. One of these days, I may try to dig them up and get digital copies made.

We grabbed some food, and drove back to U.S. Rte. 41 continuing our drive across U.S. 41. My friend drove, and I looked outside the window at the "river of grass." It was magical to see the "river of grass". I thought of Marjory Stoneham Douglas' words. I saw the canals and the infrastructure for various water control projects that changed the shape of the 'Glades. I tried to imagine what the 'Glades were like all those years ago.

After 90 minutes or so, we came to our next stop in the ENP where there is an observation, some short trails, and a chance to sign up for a tour. We walked the trail and took the tour. Again, I rejoiced in seeing the "river of grass", and seeing the wildlife that I had read about. We finished the tour and headed back east, spending a little time on some of the dirt roads off of Rte. 41 and stopping at a trail head and walking through a forest.

I wish that I had kept a written diary of that day, I did not. Nonetheless, the images of what we saw live on.

More on Horseshoe Crabs

A while back I wrote about horseshoe crabs in my blog. I recently got my summer edition of the Nature Conservancy's magazine. In May and June Nature Conservancy participated in a horseshoe crab census near Cape May, New Jersey. There is an article about their work with horseshoe crabs here.

Five part LA Times series on wildfires

The LA Times has a five-part series on wildfires. Not being a regular reader of the LA Times, I'm not sure how long these articles and associated videos will be freely available. Part 1 is dated 27 July, and part 5 is dated 3 August. By the way, the thumbnail of part 5 refers to Australia fighting wildfires differently then Americans do.

I first heard about the LA Times series a couple of days ago and only just know remembered to post the link. I have not read these articles yet, and intend to do so. Perhaps while I listen to the Yanks play the LA Angels. Anyway, I wanted to post this link now so that any of you who are interested can check it out.

As a frame of reference, I just checked the link for the article I referred to in my post on Apple Pie Ridge on July 19. The article is dated July 7 and as of today (August 2), the link is still active. Perhaps this will provide a frame of reference for how long this five-part series will be freely available

Marjory Stoneman Douglas

It was sometime in 1990 or early 1991 when I began reading about the Everglades for a research project I did as a part of my work in graduate school.. It did not take long for me to hear the name Marjory Stoneman Douglas in connection with the Everglades. I don't remember where I first heard her name, it may have been someone from the Everglades National Park. Not that it matters.

She wrote a book, first published in 1947, called The Everglades: River of Grass. I was urged to read the book. I found a copy at my University's library and read it. I later picked up a revised edition (1987) with an afterward, from the Everglades National Park Service.

The Friends of the Everglades was founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, you might want to check out their bio of her here. Their mission is to protect and restore the Everglades.

At the time I did my research, I had never been to the Everglades. In reading her book, especially her first chapter, the Everglades came alive to me. She had the gift of painting a wonderful visual picture of the 'Glades. Her first sentence is poignant:

There are no other Everglades in the world. They are, they have always been, one of the unique regions of the earth, never wholly known. (Stoneham Douglas, 1987, p.5)

I felt her sadness as she told of the destruction of large portions of her beloved 'Glades. It was her advocacy on behalf of the 'Glades that was, in large measure, responsible for the establishment of the Everglades National Park in 1947. She died at the age of 108 in the late 1998.

Nature Conservancy

I met with some of the wonderful folk at one of the New Jersey offices of the Nature Conservancy today. I am going to be doing some volunteer work in their skylands office and perhaps help out with some field work once or twice a month in the warmer months. They do good work both within the United States and globally. For more information about what they do, go here.

I am honored to have an opportunity to help out the Nature Conservancy locally in whatever very small ways that I can. I may not be able to write more than this here, but be assured that I am looking forward to volunteering with the Nature Conservancy.

Global Warming and wildfires

I have been thinking about global warming for a few weeks now. I have known that the southwest is among the regions in the United States that have been experiencing an extended drought. I have to be honest that I had not thought all that much about the relationship between wildfires, the extended drought in the southwest, and global warming until I first heard about the wildfire outbreak in California in June.

When I began to spend more time reading about the wildfires in CA with a special focus on the basin complex wildfire, I started thinking about wildfires and global warming. Not that I'm in a position to make any sort of "educated" statement equating the recent wildfires in California with global warming. I'm not. At this point all I have are questions that I can only answer with hunches.

On the question of the relationship of the CA wildfires and the extended drought, it seems to me that there has to be a relationship between the two. It only makes sense. In my way of thinking, it is not exactly rocket science to say that when there is an extended period of drought conditions that their is a greater risk of wildfires. Are these wildfires more serious and occurring earlier? I seem to recall seeing something to that effect on either a National Park Service or a U.S. Forest Service wildfire website within the last couple of days. I'll need to go back and check this out to find my answer. What are the folk researching global warming and/or wildfires saying about global warming and wildfires? I'll have to check this out.

As I explore these and other questions over the coming weeks, I'll fill you in on some answers with links for more information on this blog, so stay tuned.

containment

The researcher part of me got the better of me this afternoon when I tried to find a definition of what it means when, for example, it was reported that the basin complex fire is 100% contained.

I finally found this glossary with short definitions of many of the terms that I have been reading about.

After reading some definitions in this glossary and the much longer Fireline Handbook (I should warn you that this Handbook is over 400 pages long and comes in at over 3 MB). I decided to keep it simple and not to worry about precise definitions of containment as used in connection to the basin complex fire because I was getting into multiple definitions. I also started asking myself questions like does the meaning of containment vary with measures used to fight individual wildfires? And does containing a fire in the NJ Pine Barrens mean something different than containing a fire such as the basin complex fire. I decided that the important thing is that the basin complex fire is contained.

The map was obtained on July 29, 2008 from http://165.221.39.44/incident/maps/large/1367/0/

hoses

For those of us who have had to deal with managing garden hoses . . .

After reading this post from Kelly O'Brien's blog I have different view of what I used to call my battles with my garden hose:

http://thefirelane.blogspot.com/2008/07/and-you-think-that-your-garden-hose-is.html

basin complex fire contained

A very brief update on the basin complex fire. kusp radio posted a report from the U.S. Forest Service reporting that the fire is at 100% containment. More work has yet to be done.

I had company this past weekend so did not have a chance to report that the voluntary evacuations were lifted either late Friday night or Saturday.

I'll post more on this in a day or so.

Photos of Basin Complex Fire

Speaking of Incaweb, here is a link to photos of the Basin Complex from Incaweb. You will also find photos here. If you take time to look at Life in the Firelane, you will also find photos. If you check out some of the other links that I have referred to in my earlier postings on the Basin Complex Fire you will probably find other photos.

Fighting Wildfires in the Everglades

I found this slide show of fire fighting equipment on the Everglades National Park website. If you put your cursor at the top of the photo during the slide show you will see the caption.

I suspect that some of the equipment is the same for all wildfires. However, one piece of equipment that you will see is called a flapper. It looks to me like it is made to fight fires in grasslands. Then again what do I know?

For photos of the Mustang Corners see incaweb and this photo gallery on the Everglades National Park webpage.

Maps of the Mustang Corners Fire

At the time that I am writing this, Inca web has some maps of the Mustang Corners fire posted. Go here for a map of the fire's progress as of May 22.

A map of the fire's perimeter is found here.

Wildfires in Florida in May 2008

On or about May 14, 2008 wildfires started burning in the Everglades National Park in South Florida. By the time the fires were contained in early June, just over 39,000 acres were burned. Known as the Mustang Corners fire, this fire followed a series of fires in the Palm Beach area, in Brevard County south of Daytona Beach, that burned 12,000 acres. Other fires included about 19,000 acres on the south end of Lake Okeechobee, 1,300 acres in the Florida panhandle near Apalochicola, 257 acres in the Ocala National Forest in Central Florida and a couple of smaller fires in the Everglades National Park.

Information on the Mustang Corners fire in Everglades National Park may be found here and here. The two smaller wildfires in the Everglades National Park are very briefly referenced in this press release. A CNN report on May 18 reviews the then current status of the Mustang Corners fire as well as other Florida wildfires. What is probably the final incident report on the Mustang Corners fire may be found on InciWeb. Inciweb goes down periodically so if the link does not work, try back again later.

Damage reports for the Brevard Çounty wildfires may found in this press release issued by the Brevard County Office of Emergency Management. They report that 194 buildings were affected by these wildfires with 42 residences being destroyed.

CNN reports on the arrest of a man alleged to have caused some of the Brevard County fires. Both InciWeb and the National Park Service report that the Mustang Corners fire was caused by humans.

Coming attractions

I am going to continue posting updates on the basin complex fire here and other issues related to this wildfire.

I am however going to start moving to writing about the Everglades. I believe that I mentioned several days ago that a couple of months ago there was a major wildfire in the Everglades caused, I believe, by an arsonist. I first got interested in the Everglades for a project I did in graduate school, beginning a long love affair with the 'Glades. So it seems fitting to devote some time to the "Glades.

No, I have not forgotten about New Jersey. I want to write about the Pine Barrens, but it might take me a couple of weeks or so before I get to this.

update on basin complex fire as of July 22 AM

kusp radio is reporting that the basin complex fire is 72% contained with over 137,000 acres burned to date. Voluntary evacuation orders remain in effect. I have not yet mentioned that one of contributing factors to the spread of this fire is sudden oak death in tan oaks. Stands of dead tan oaks have provided fuel for the fire. For more detail see this summary from the U.S. Forest Service (posted on July 22). Forest Service map obtained from http://www.kusp.org/fire/images/map_basin_7_22.jpg on 22 July 2008.

update on all fires in California

The focus of my writing has been on the basin complex fire. I want to pause a moment and provide an update on the status of other fires burning in California. According to the CAL FIRE webpage, maintained by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, there are still 33 active fires burning. At the peak of wildfire activity (since 20 June), there were 2,096 wildfires reported by state, local, and federal fire fighting agencies. A total of 953,907 acres have been burned to date.

According to todays fact sheet 123 residences, 1 commercial building, and 138 out buildings have been destroyed. These are the stats for threatened structures: 4,958 residences, 139 commercial buildings, and 2,166 out buildings. There have been 15,573 personnel used to fight the fires to date. Evacuation orders are still in effect for portions of Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Lake and Mendocino counties. What CAL fire calls precautionary evacuation orders (aka voluntary evacuation orders??) are in effect for portions of Monterary (basin complex fire) and Trinity Counties.

For those so inclined, you can go here to download a map of what are known as the June Lightening fires in California. It is an adobe reader file. I spent a little time looking at the map. Fires range from counties near the Oregon border south to Santa Barbara County.

As I was watching the weather channel a little while ago, they reported on a wildfire of unknown origin burning on 100 acres outside Denver.

Apple Pie Ridge

I was first introduced, so to speak, to the Curtis brothers, owners of 55 acres known as the Apple Pie Ridge not far from the town of Big Sur CA while reading this entry from the Cachagua Store blog. Briefly, the Curtis brothers with the help of family, friends, and tenants set back fires and other fire fighting techniques and were successful in defending their homes from being burnt down by the fire. They did so because they were told that firefighters would be able to defend their homes from the fire. Their success came at a cost with the younger brother being arrested for arson.

The LA Times has a very good article about the Curtis Brothers, Micah and Ross, in the July 7 edition of the paper. I am accessing this article on July 19 and I'm not certain how much longer it will be freely available.

Reading these accounts of the defense of Apple Pie Ridge got me thinking. If I had heard national news media accounts of the defense of Apple Pie Ridge and the arrest of Ross Curtis for arson, I might have been horrified because what they did would have been completely foreign to me. I heard no such reports, nor have I been able to find any on the web. I am not horrified, quite the contrary. I found myself thinking about the courage and strength of character displayed by the Curtis family, their friends and tenants. They are the kind of people that I would want as neighbors.

Before closing I want to say that members of the Curtis family will be the first to tell you that they are not advising people to set backfires to save their homes from forest fires. Tyson Curtis, Micah's son commenting on an article on the LA Times article has this to say (comments made on July 11 from 3:01 PM to 3:25 PM PDT):

I have so much to say, but i'll be as succinct as possible. To those in favor of what we did: I DO NOT advise people to defend their homes and set back fires... we had two experienced fire fighters with us that understood the technique, and this is evidence in their flawless execution of fighting fire with fire. In fact, since we know every inch of our property I'm sure we executed our back burns better than any fire fighter could.

Second, this was more leading the fire than back burning, we were burning ahead of the fire only when it was several hundred feet from us... and so there was NO chance anyone was between us and that fire. Also, this made the fire burn down hill, instead of up, which kept the fire under control and actually put LESS fire fighters and neighbors at risk because it burned slower and more manageably.

I would like to thank the one fire crew who came up thursday morning and helped direct the back burn that we set in motion... (while we were cutting hand lines on the back side of the ranch where the fire was making a second assault) but as for the higher ups... well this is the third time our ranch has burned over, and i have little faith you'll be there when my kids are fighting the next one.

And a lot of people seem to think we waited until the last second to cut brush and clear around our houses; this isn't true. We cut brush every winter and maintain fire clearance around our ridge top... but in steep terrain flames can clear three or four hundred feet of clearance. The clearing we were doing before the fire was added precaution and when the fire crews showed up to evaluate our ranch it was nearly clear cut; they STILL thought it was indefensible... and were obviously wrong.

And as for burning down our neighbors houses, the main fire was coming, and if we hadn't taken action in a way that we could control the fire... it could have been disastrous for our neighbors. The proof of this is that everyone i've seen has thanked me for stopping the fire on top of our ridge, and not a single person has questions our means of doing so. Unless you know the terrain you wouldn't understand what we did... any fire fighter should know that!

The fire burned all the way to highway one a mile south and north of us... and it would have done just that here too, which would have threatened the seven homes at the bottom of our ridge.

(obtained from http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-backfire-gb,0,2173086
.graffitiboard on 19, July 2008)

Update on basin complex fire as of 7/18/08 PM

Kelly O'Brian, the author of the Life in the Fire Lane blog, who is also affiliated with KUSP radio (NPR) reported last night that the danger is not over for the residents of Jamesburg and Cachagua CA. These are the areas where the mandatory evacuations were lifted Wednesday night (July 16), and downgraded to a voluntary evacuation.

In an interview with Rick Hutchinson of CAL fire, Rick reported that the danger is not over for residents of Cachagua and Jamesburg. Specifically, they may have to go back to a mandatory evacuation at much shorter notice than the last time. The interview may be found here.

As I write this it is just past 11 AM EDT on Saturday, July 19. I checked my usual sources on the internet and have no later updates.

Kelly lives in Jamesburg and my friend lives in Cachagua.

I'll keep you updated .

Some mandatory evacuations lifted in basin complex fire

Kelly O'Brian, author of the Life in the Fire Lane blog, reported last night that many but not all of the mandatory evacuations have been lifted, at least temporarily.

I want to point out that many of those affected by these mandatory evacuations chose to stay behind, sometimes separated from their loved ones, to defend their property from the fire. Apparently this is not unheard of in this part of the country. This meant that they could get out.

If I understand correctly, at least some of the mandatory evacuation zones were a few miles from active fires so those staying behind were not necessarily in imminent danger from the fire. Where some of the zones were declared mandatory evacuation zones so that fire fighters could have needed road and other access to do their work. I think.

Five Zen Monks fight fire

The story of five Zen Buddhist Monks from the San Francisco Zen Center on Tassajara Road in Carmel Valley CA who returned to their compound after an evacuation on July 9 to fight the fire in their compound.

You may find a link to their story on this web page along with links to various updates.

Finally check out at least some of these awesome photographs taken by the five monks.

How the Basin Complex Fire got started

According to today's report (18 July) of the status of the Basin Complex Fire in Los Padres National Forest (near Big Sur) in CA, over 128,000 acres have burned. It is 65% contained. The estimated total cost just to fight this fire is $53.8 million. These figures were obtained from Inci web's basin complex fire page.

The fire was started by lightening on June 21, as were several of the other wildfires that are or were still burning. In my wonderings on the internet today I found this account with some photos from someone who was on a trail with a view of the start of the fire.

NJ Forest Fire Service helping fight CA wildfires

The NJ Forest Fire Service has sent 31 members to CA to help fight the wildfires.

For more information see this press release from the NJ Forest Fire Service.

Basin Complex Fire

I have been following one particular fire that is still burning in CA, the fire known as the basin complex fire currently burning in the Los Padres Forest (near Big Sur).

Why am I writing this? Perhaps it is to make a statement that this blogger who lives in the northeastern United States cares deeply about what is happening. Mention of your fires may be relegated to a small corner of my newspapers (if mentioned at all). I think about all affected by the basin complex fire and the other fires still burning in California every day. Perhaps what I am writing is an act of prayer, of letting you know that you are not forgotten.

One thing that has touched me in my readings of a couple of blogs as well as some e–mail updates I am getting from a friend who is living very near the basin complex fire is their strength of character, and the love they hold for their forest. I suspect that most know of the danger of living where they live, in an area known for fires. I am moved beyond words, so I won’t even try.

But to set a very brief context, please allow me to speak very briefly about living in fire–prone areas and evacuations.

Just as there are things that residents in areas such as Florida and the Gulf of Mexico do to hurricane–proof their homes there are things that people living in fire–prone areas can do that may reduce the chance that the home will be burned down:
clearing up debris from around the house, using flame retardant roofing shingles, not planting trees close to the home and the like. I suppose for many, these measures are a part of life. See this July 2008 graphic from The National Geographic Magazine about ways to make a house less forest-fire prone.

The house where my friend lives is, I think, still in a voluntary evacuation zone. But at last word, she was only one mile from a mandatory evacuation zone. So, since she is still voluntary, she can come and go as she pleases. But once a voluntary goes to a mandatory evacuation, residents are not permitted to go back to their houses after they leave. So, residents in a mandatory zone are living like rats in cages as some blogger’s have put it. They cannot go to the store. And if someone in his or her family was out of the house when the mandatory evacuation went into effect, well tough luck. Of course, hurricanes and floods can lead to evacuation orders. Not that I have been through either I have not. For more information about the meaning of various types of evacuations, see this webpage (courtesy of kusp radio) with definitions of the various types of evacuations.

If anyone in or near the region affected by the basin complex fire in CA or who has been affected by other forest fires in the west has any comments that you would care to make, I'd love to hear from you! :-)

For more information on the basin complex fire see:

1. Life in the fire lane

2. Cachagua CA Fire Department. Cachagua is one of the communities affected by the basin complex fire.

3. Inca web: basin complex wildland fire information (this site has current information about the fire. It gets a lot of traffic and you may have trouble accessing the site.)

4. kusp radio (near Big Sur CA, I think). This site has current fire maps, evacuation orders, updates, good links.

5. Monterey CA (I think) TV station (ksbw): videos, links

6. SurFire08 (community website)

Map of fire as of July 14 obtained from http://www.kusp.org/fire/images/map_basin_7_14_large.jpg on 16 July, 2008

copyright 2008 K. Tyler Miller

Speaking of fires

When I was in grad school I spend a lot of time reading about and then writing about urban encroachment on the Everglades in Florida. So, one of the things that I read about was the role of fire in the ecology of the Everglades. I hope to write about the Everglades and the recent fire of a few weeks ago in a later entry.

Fires in CA

I am switching gears.

Before going to Vermont, I had heard about wildfires in CA as well as fires in the Everglades in Florida in the late spring. While we were in Vermont, I heard about all the wildfires in CA on National Public Radio, especially the one in Big Sur.

These wildfires have touched me in a way that I can quite explain here.

Rather than try to find wholly inadequate words to explain what is going on, for those of you are interested, here are some websites where you can find out more.

The Big Sur community has a website called surfire2008.org There is good blog with updates about the fires and a link for donations. A friend of mine from the region has assured me that the money will go to people who have lost their homes and possessions. And they take paypal and snail mail donations.

Here is another fire blog, this one by a woman who lives not far from the basin complex fire.

According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, there were 1,781 fires at the peak, 1,458 fires are contained, leaving 323 fires still burning. Over 675,000 acres have burned. Many but not all the fires were started by lightening.

This is a local television station, ksbw, that has newsupdates and links on a webpage devoted to the fires.

When the ordinary is extraordinary in VT: wildflowers

One of the nice things about coming to my cabin in June is seeing all the wildflowers around my cabin and in my meadow. They are especially beautiful this year, and I have never seen so many different varieties. Some of these flowers may be from the garden that my great-aunt Marjorie keep fifty some odd years ago. I suspect that birds and other natural processes account for some of the others. Some are probably invasives pr weeds and all are beautiful. Funny, what I consider a "weed" in New Jersey" is not a "weed in Vermont.

In any case, I have enjoyed seeing these flowers this year because they are natural. Here are some pictures of some of these flowers.

When the ordinary is extraordinary in VT: glacial erratics

A couple of days before I left for Vermont I was having an e-mail correspondence with a friend of mine from Australia. For no particular reason, I sent him five photos of my property in Vermont and the surrounding area. One of these photos is the photograph of the Lake in front of my cabin taken at sunset showing a large granite boulder sitting in about eight feet of water.

This is a favorite photo of mine (see the top photo), and I have about five different digital photos and who knows how many photos that predate digital photos. I have showed some version of this photo to many people over the years.

When my friend wrote back to me thanking me for the photos, he inquired:

“I find myself wondering how the rock got there?”

This very simple question got me thinking. I wrote back telling him the very short story of the geological history of this part of Vermont, that when glaciers passed over this area several thousand years ago large boulders were dropped at random and haphazardly. When the ice sheet retreated, these boulders, sometimes called glacial erratics were often left standing alone in a field, in a forest, or even in a body of water. In case you are wondering, according to local geologists, many of these erratics are granite.

Because it was only a few hours before my imminent departure, I had time for only the briefest of explanations to my friend, who also marveled at the trees. I wrote him a shorter version of the preceding paragraph and sent him some Internet links explaining local geology and forestry.

I was very glad for my friends question about how the rock got in the lake for it made me think about how unusual this rock is. I have taken this rock for granted for more years than I care to admit here. I never wondered how the rock got there because I always knew how the rock got there. I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who had never been to this part of America before. I don’t take the erratics that are all too common in this part of New England for granted any more. I wanted to find one photograph that showed an erratic boulder in all its glory to show my friend (bottom photo). And I remembered this erratic on the high spot of a shoulder of a mountain. This photo is for my friend in Australia.

back in the land of the internet

I am back in the land of the internet. That is I choose not to have internet access (in this case dial-up) at my cabin in Vermont.

I'll tell you a secret. The entries that I wrote from 19 June on were all written before I left home. I did not make any postings from Vermont. But I did write two more entries that I will post now. One is on wildflowers and the other is on glacial erratics (written for a friend in Australia).

The ordinary is extraordinary in VT: maple sugar taps

Many of you, at least in the northeastern part of the United States know that Vermont is well known for its maple sugar. In march of every year when the days start to get at or above freezing and the nights are still cold, the sap in the sugar maples run. Maple sugaring is still very much alive and well in the northeast kingdom, as it is in other sections of Vermont.

Maple syrup comes from a stand of Maple trees, usually Sugar Maples, known as a sugar bush. I say my first and only sugar bush when I was fourteen, I won't tell you how many years ago that was. I was with my Dad and my Great-Uncle John in his wood plot on some land he owned on the side of the mountain adjoining the Lake. Uncle John had on old jeep that he used in Vermont, the type of jeeps that you might have seen in movies about World War II except it was gray and not olive drab. There was an old woods road that he could use to access his land from one of the town gravel roads.

Uncle John's idea was to cut a road from the old woods road down to the highway so he would be able to access his land. By this time, Uncle John was in almost seventy. My Dad and I went along to help him on this task that took about three days. I had a great time, by the way. Uncle John had an old chain saw that he used and I cleared brush and perhaps hacked away at smaller trees with a hatchet or a camp axe.

As we drove along this old woods road the first day, Uncle John pointed out a sugar bush owned by one of the local farmers complete with taps (in the trees) and tubing. I thought this was pretty neat.

I have tried without too much success to find this old road, all these years later, including a concerted effort about twenty-five years ago with no luck. Uncle John sold his land in the woods to his younger brother before he died. Uncle John got sick with what we know now as post-polio syndrome a couple of years later. For he had polio in one of the polio epidemics in the first part of the twentieth century when he was about ten. I don't think that he ever used the road that we built down to the highway, but I had a lot of fun and remember the sugar bush.

The ordinary is extraordinary in VT: a butterfly

I think that it was three years ago that I was outside my cabin in Vermont with my digital camera and was able to take this picture of a butterfly in the ferns that grow outside my cabin. I thought that this was pretty cool. Not exactly an award winning photograph, but I was happy to capture an extraordinary moment: seeing the butterfly when I had my digital camera

The ordinary is extraordinary in VT: cows

There are many dairy farms in the northeast kingdom of Vermont. At least I think that most of the cows that I see are dairy cows and not beef cattle, but I am hardly an expert. So seeing cows grazing in a field is a common sight. I sometimes great them as we drive by with a

"Hello, ladies."

Not that they can hear us we drive by.

When I was a kid growing up in the sixties, my Dad who went to boarding school in Vermont and summered not far from my cabin, used to say that there were more cows in Vermont than people. I think that the time is long past that that was true, if it ever was. But it was a nice story.

The ordinary is extraordinary in VT: wildlife

Being on a lake in northeastern Vermont, there is an abundance of wildlife. The call of the Loon’s is not hard to miss once you know what to listen for, usually around dusk. More often than not you are more likely to hear the Loons before you see them. And if there does happen to be one floating by within eyesight, if you do not happen to be looking right at the Loon at the right moment, it will dive under the water and you will miss it. I think that there is a breeding pair of Loons on the Lake. I think. However, I usually only see one at a time.

About a three minute swim from my dock is a large rock sitting in the water with a large ring in it. At one time someone may have used this rock as a mooring for a boat. Personally, I can not see mooring a boat to that rock because the lake is rough enough at times that I wonder if a boat would be smashed to smithereens! But the birds love to come and stand on the rock. Here is a photo of a seagull standing on the rock. There are some Merganser Ducks that breed near the lake. In the summer, Mama (or is it Papa?) will sometimes take her brood (sometimes as many as ten or more) to the rock where they climb up on the rock and sun themselves. They are quite a sight. I see them most every summer. It is hard to get a picture, as I have to be sitting out on the dock with my camera when they arrive. If I am successful this year, I will try to post a photo so you can see.

The sounds of the loon and the visits of the Mergansers are common. Harder to see are other animals such as beavers and minks. I think that I have seen a mink once or twice scurrying along on the rocks near the shoreline. I saw a beaver once. Every so often I’ll see a fish jumping in the water. Hummingbirds come around as well. I see the bees visiting the fox gloves on the side of my cabin, or the butterflies visiting the lilies.

The ordinary is extraordinary in VT: night sky

A few weeks ago I was writing on the general theme of when the ordinary is extraordinary. So, I thought that I’d revisit this theme as I prepare postings that will made to my blog when I am in Vermont and away from internet access. For those of you who are not familiar with Google’s blogger, there is this nifty setting that allows you to write a post ahead of time for publishing at a future date and time. So, as I write this, I am drawing on post memories of my time in Vermont.

In the section of Vermont where I spend time every summer, the night sky is relatively free of light pollution. On a moon free clear night, the sky is extraordinary. The stars are indescribable. There are so many stars that are visible to the naked eye, including but not limited to the band of stars known as the Milky Way. Most of you know that the Milky Way is the galaxy where our solar system is. But in a clear, light pollution free night sky, we can also see a faint band of stars of another section of the Milky Way.

My cabin faces west, so I am very familiar with the constellations in the western portion of the summer nighttime sky. I love to go out and lay on my dock looking up at the night sky. I am reminded of the magnitude of creation and find the stars comforting. I also get to see Venus when it is the evening sky as well as whatever planets are setting during the summer. In May, I saw Mars low in the western sky around 10 PM. Saturn was a little higher in the sky and should still be visible next week. Perhaps I will be to see the rings with my astronomical binoculars.

I’ll write back after I return and let you know if I was successful at making out Saturn’s rings with my binoculars.

Bob Gibson

I cannot write about baseball players who made an impact on me in my youth without writing about Bob Gibson. Bob Gibson pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals from 1959 through 1975, with lifetime stats of:

ERA: 2.91
Won/loss 251/174
Strikeouts 3,117

I was not a National League fan growing up, but I saw him pitch in three World Series, 1964, 1967, and 1968. St. Louis beat the Yankees in seven games in 1964, beat the Boston Red Sox in seven in 1967 before losing to the Detroit Tigers in 1968. He was an awesome pitcher and I hated him. I hated him because he was such a good pitcher who beat up on the American League.

I am sure that I watched the 1964 series. Asides from the fact that the Cards beat the Yankees, there was nothing much that stayed with me about that series. 1967 was another story. Gibson, killed the Red Sox. I watched most of that series, The Sox could do nothing against Gibson. The Sox scored three runs off Gibson in the three games that he pitched (1, 4, and 7). Gibson pitched on three days rest, pitching complete games in his starts. That year he had a 1.12 fifth on the list for single season leaders for lowest earned run average. In case you are wondering, Dwight Gooden had a 1.53 era in 1985 (43rd on the list). All the players ranked between Gibson and Gooden played prior to 1920. Think about it. All these years later, I still shake my head when I think about watching Gibson pitch that year.

In 1968, he had one bad game against the Tigers, giving up four runs in the seventh and deciding game, losing 4 to 0 to Mickey Lolich and the Tigers. Lolich gave up only one run, in the bottom of the ninth inning, a homerun by Mike Shannon, the Tigers third baseman. Those of you who are into such things know that the Detroit Tiger’s Denny McClain won 31 games that year, the last major league pitcher to win at least 30 games..

My hat is off to you, Bob Gibson. The hatred of my youth is replaced by awe and respect. Will we ever see a single season era lower than your 1967 era?

*With the exception of the reference to single season leader for era, the stats come from The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball: Total Baseball, Seventh Edition (2001), Total Sports Publishing.

Trying something new

I am trying something new this summer during the next couple of weeks when I will be without easy access to the internet. There is a feature where I can write posts ahead of time and set an option so that my post will be published on a specific day at a specific time. So, I am trying this out and will be writing a few posts over the next few days that I will publish at regular intervals over two weeks.

Frank and Brooks Robinson

It was difficult to be a baseball fan in the 1960s and not to know about Frank and Brooks Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles. Those of you who are baseball fans, know that they are not related. Brooks was the 3rd baseman and Frank played the outfield.

As I was checking out baseball stats for my recent baseball writing in The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball: Total Baseball (seventh edition, 2001), I was reminded that Frank Robinson won the triple crown batting title in 1966, one year before Yaz. Considering that there have only been fourteen Triple Crown Batters in Major League history, it is notable that there were Triple Crown winners two years in a row.

That year, Frank hit 49 homers, 122 runs batted inn, and had a .316 batting average. That same year, not surprisingly, Frank was the American League MVP with Brooks finished 2nd and the Orioles Boog Powell finishing 3rd.. This was also the year that the Orioles beat the LA Dodgers in the World Series. Brooks got his own MVP in 1964.

Brooks was no slouch at the plate either and he played a mean 3rd base.

I would be remiss not to mention Boog Powell of the Orioles and give him his due, another awesome hitter. He won the MVP in 1970.

I actually think that I might have seen an Orioles game in person in either 1965 or 1966, but my memory is fuzzy, so I would not bet money on this.

I remember watching the Orioles on television in 1969, 1970, and 1971. I especially remember my disappointment that they lost the World Series to the Mets in 1969. Neither Frank nor Brooks hit during the series. Frank batted .188 and Brooks batted .053. That happens sometimes in the World Series. But I do not remember them for not hitting during the 1969 series, I remember them for all their accomplishments through the years, and their two World Series rings (1966 and 1979) and four American League Championships (1966, 1969, 1970, and 1971).

Carl Yastremzki and Harmon Killebrew

Carl Yastrzemzki (Yaz) of the Boston Red Sox won the last triple crown batting title in Major League Baseball in 1967. He had 121 runs batted in, a .326 batting average, and was tied with Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins with 44 home runs. I was thirteen that summer and remember the hitting competition between Yastremzki and Killebrew. It was exciting to watch (or read about in the newspapers). In addition, Boston and Minnesota were in a dogfight for the American League Championship during the last week of the season.

According to 1967 season statistics compiled by The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball: Total Baseball (seventh edition, 2001), Yaz and Killebrew were 1 and 2 in the following categories:

Runs: Yaz 112, Killebrew 105
Total Bases: Yaz 360, Killebrew 305
Runs batted in: Yaz 121, Killebrew 113
MVP (American League) Killebrew finished a distant 2nd (161 votes) to Yaz (275 votes)

Killebrew got his MVP in 1969, the year they lost to the Orioles in the first American League Championship Series. That was the year of the “Miracle Mets.”

I remember watching both Yastrzmezki and Killebrew on television during the late sixties and early seventies. Yaz retired in 1983, and Killebrew retired in 1975. They continued a force at the plate after 1967, but 1967 was special.

Horseshoe Crabs

I have always loved Horseshoe Crabs. I read about them in the New York Times science section on June 10, 2008. Seems that the marine biologists are concerned about a decline in their numbers due to habitat destruction and their use as bait. So there are counts of the Horseshoe Crab population going on in various places, including Delaware.

So, these articles got me thinking about the summer I was six years old when I met my first Horseshoe Crabs. My sister and I spent one month with our grandparents who lived on the north shore of Long Island on a small cove off of the Long Island Sound. My grandmother would take us for walks along the beach and we say many Horseshoe Crabs lumbering their way to or from the water. I think that they might have been spawning. Asides from our cat Figgy, and a parakeet that died of heart attack after being terrorized by Figgy, the Horseshoe Crab was the first animal that I remember seeing alive. I say this because we used to go to a museum where we saw stuffed animals in displays.

They are one of the oldest animals around, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs.

I have fond memories of seeing Horseshoe Crabs that summer and during subsequent visits if we were there at the right time of year. I tried to feed my banana one summer. Needless to say the Horseshoe Crab was not interested. I don't think that I have seen a Horseshoe Crab in years. I love them and I hope that we can keep our grimmy mits off of them and let them be.

Martin Luther King's March on Washington in 1963

Since I am writing about the summer of 1963, I would be remiss not to write about Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech that he gave during the rally that was a part of the march on Washington that year.

The only reason that I can say with reasonable confidence that I remember this speech is because this happened during the period when I was confined to bed. I can't say that I remember all that much about the speech itself. But I do have a distinct memory of watching Martin Luther King on television giving what could have been his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Perhaps all the networks televised this speech and I had no other option than to watch it. Or perhaps I watched it because of my mother's influence. My Mum was an admirer of Dr. King's. Even if my memory of watching this on television is a false memory influenced by the significance of this speech, I will always remember the summer of 1963 as being the first time that Dr. King entered my life.

Speaking of casts

The cast that I was referring to in yesterday's post was a rather impressive plaster cast that immobilized my entire left leg while my fractured left hip healed. I effectively spent the summer of 1963 in bed, about six weeks in traction in the hospital and another two months in this cast at home. It started just below my rib cage going down my entire left leg. At first it covered my left foot as well, but I soon managed to break the cast just below my ankle.

If memory serves, I got out of the hospital sometime in mid-August of 1963. My parents rented a hospital bed that they set up in my Dad's first floor study. This made it easier for my parents to take care of me. It was still summer. The cast was hot, and it itched.

As I said, I did not have a whole lot to do except homework and watching TV. Oh, and play cards. My Dad taught me how to play poker and black jack. I remember drawing into a straight royal flush in one of my first hands. I remember this because my Dad was absolutely amazed that this happened. A once in a life time occurrence.

I got the cast off sometime in October, and was gradually eased back into walking. Very gradually. By the end of October, I might have been in a wheel chair with restricted use of crutches. I remember sitting in a tiger costume giving out Halloween candy to the trick or treaters. On the day that John F. Kennedy was shot, I had an appointment with my Orthopod where I graduated to one crutch. I will always remember that day. As my Mother took me to the Orthopod, I remember seeing crowds lined up in shop windows watching television.

By Christmas I was walking without anything, not even a cane. After New Years, my sabbatical from going to school ended and I went to the fourth grade. Bummer.

Sandy Koufax

I don't think that I had any idea who Sandy Koufax was or what a great pitcher he was when I watched my first world series in October of 1963. I was still confined to bed, this time at home, recovering from my broken hip. My parents had purchased a small television (black and white) with a remote control that I kept in a little box near the hospital bed that they set up for me on the first floor. I was in a half body cast with the right leg free. So I wasn't going anywhere. So, I watched a couple of now defunct soap operas, cartoons, Dobie Gillis, and baseball. Oh, and I was supposed to be doing homework assigned by my home tutor who was supposed to be keeping up with my forth grade class.

In those days all the world series games were played in the afternoon. I suspect that as long as I did whatever homework assignment I had, or pretended that I had done my homework, that my mother would let me watch the baseball game. It was the Yankees versus the LA Dodgers. And I was rooting for the Dodgers. If you are so inclined, there is complete box score for this series found here. The Dodgers won in four games with Sandy Koufax winning two games. I watched Sandy Koufax in one more world series, the 1965 series

As a life long baseball fan, I am still awestruck by his lifetime earned run average (2.76). He retired at a fairly young age, somewhere around 30 years of age if I recall due to arm problems, perhaps arthritis. 165 wins. And hall of famer. Imagine what he could have done if he had been able to pitch longer.

Needless to say, Sandy Koufax was one of my first heroes, along with Don Drysdal. I knew that Sandy Koufax was special and in subsequent years I would find out how special he was. When people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would respond:

I want to be the first female pitcher on the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Day games in baseball

Looking back on my childhood experiences as a baseball fan, it feels like there were more baseball games played during the day. For example, I can remember asking my parents if I could leave school early to watch day games during the 1967 and 1968 World Series. When I was recovering from my broken hip at home, I can remember watching the 1963 World Series, the Yankees v. the Dodgers. I know for a fact that there had to be some day games in 1963 because I had an early bed time and would not have been allowed to stay up late to watch baseball.

Baseball writers and sports radio talk show host will frequently bemoan the lack of baseball played during the day, especially around World Series time. All I am going to say is that I am glad that there were more day games played during the week while I was growing up in the sixties. I feel fortunate because watching day games gave me an appreciation for baseball and some of the dominant players of the era that I might not have gotten otherwise. I will be writing about some of these players, so stay tuned.

PATH tubes to Yankee Stadium one last time

For many years we lived less than two miles from what are known as the PATH tubes, in this case the Newark to World Trade Center line. So, for all those years and continuing after we moved further west in NJ when we had need to go into NYC we would drive to Harrison, NJ and take the PATH tubes into lower Manhattan.

The lower Manhattan station, as many of you may know was in the World Trade Center. There were some escalators leading from the mall–like promenade to the PATH station. Sometimes we would meet up with people, usually my older cousin, at the top of the escalators leading to the PATH station. This was a good rendezvous point, and reasonably easy to get to from the west–side subways. I have many found memories of the PATH station at the World Trade Center and environs. It was for many years, our gateway to New York.

When we would go to Yankee games with Anne and were husband, we would usually meet up at our house in west Hudson County and drive the short distance to the PATH station. There were some reasonably clean bathrooms in the PATH station that we would use. They also were not too scary in that we were never afraid to use them.

So when we had tickets with Anne for a September Yankee home game we rendezvoused with Anne in the PATH station at the World Trade Center. We were living in western Jersey at this point and drove to Harrison where we parked our car and boarded the PATH train. We met Anne and her husband in the PATH station, used the facilities and got on the C train to start the subway trip to Yankee Stadium.

This was an ordinary Saturday in September. We had ended up being invited to a wedding of some friends in Massachusetts after we had already purchased the tickets to the Yankee game. So, we regretfully declined the invitation. I was scheduled to have thyroid surgery 12 days later, knew that I would be busy at work finishing up various projects, and was looking forward to spending that Saturday afternoon watching a baseball game with good friends.

My scorecard showed that the Yanks were playing the Toronto Blue Jays. David Cone was pitching for the Blue Jays and Mike Mussina was pitching for the Yanks. The Yanks beat the Jays by a score of 9 to 1.

The date was September 8, 2001.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 3): May 28, 2000 Red Sox v Yankees

The four of us had purchased tickets during the winter to the Yankees home game against the Red Sox on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We did not know that this would be our second game of the weekend. Our friends husband had to miss the game because of a bad cold, so we had a ladies night out and an extra seat for our stuff. The seats were pretty decent seats on the third base line in the loge (second) level.

I don’t think that I kept a scorecard because I had a notation on Friday night’s scorecard that this game was a pitchers duel between Pedro Martinez and Roger Clements with the Sox winning in the top of the ninth inning. I dug up the box score for the game on the Internet. Both pitchers pitched nine innings. Martinez gave up four hits and no runs and Clements gave up five hits.

Watching the two pitchers battle it out was awesome. The Red Sox – Yankee rivalry is one of the oldest in baseball. Crowds at either ballpark are always highly energized, and the crowds during the two games we saw this weekend did not disappoint. But the crowd on that Sunday night was even more energized because the game was scoreless into the top of the ninth inning. No matter whether the game is played in Yankee stadium or Fenway Park (in Boston), there are always a representative number of fans from the opposing team in the ballpark.

There were two buddies in their twenties sitting in front of us, one a Yankee fan and the other a Red Sox fan. Both were wearing Jerseys from their respective teams and were razing each other about the respective opposing team. As the night went on, they continued to raze each other getting a little louder towards the end of the game. It was all in good fun and they were very respectful to us, and especially so to our friend, Anne. Anne took it in her stride, later commenting that she is often treated as if she was someone’s mother.

In the top of the ninth inning, Boston’s Trot Nixon hit a two–run homerun off of Clements to make it a two –nothing ballgame. We did not lose hope, hoping for a bottom of the ninth comeback. The home crowd got even more vocal and more energized. The Yanks did not score a run and the game ended.

By the way, Anne’s husband watched the game on TV.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 2): May 26, 2000 Red Sox v Yankees

I think we got to our seats in time for me to fill in the rosters for the Red Sox and the Yankees prior to the start of the game. The seats were great, a few rows back on the first base side. We felt like kids, none of us had ever had such good seats at a major league baseball game. We were a little above eye level with the field. Shortly after the start of the game a waitress assigned to our area came by. It seems that club seating comes with seat side food service. She gave us a menu and said that she would be back to get our order. Since it was a night game and none of us had time to eat dinner prior to leaving for the game, we had decided to eat dinner at the ballpark. I have a note on my scorecard that we spent $68 in food, seems that seat side food service comes at a premium. I did not make a note of what we ordered, probably sausages, fries, and a soda.

The Red Sox got off to a quick lead, at the end of the third inning they were leading by a score of 4 to 1. David Cone took the loss for the Yanks with Ramon Martinez notching the win for the Red Sox. The Yankees only run came in the bottom of the third by our reserve infielder, Bellinger (playing 2nd base that night) with a solo homerun.

The most entertaining part of the game came perhaps one–third of the way through the game. We noticed a buzz in the crowd and everyone was staring at something behind home plate. It took us awhile to figure out what was going on. Finally, we looked in the netting behind home plate and saw a body lying in the net. We looked in stunned silence at the body before the body stirred and attempted to climb up the netting. The crowd cheered when they saw that the body, male, was indeed alive. He got up, took some bows and tried to climb back up the netting. It became obvious to us that he was drunk, because he was unsteady on his feet and kept falling down as he tried to climb back up the netting. We started to boo. At some point, we looked up in the stands over where he had fallen in the netting and saw some of New York’s finest. They were ready to cart him away. And when he finally got back up, they did escort him out of the area. And probably out of the stadium.

The game went on and we had a great time. We enjoyed being so close to the action. We were in foul ball territory. Nothing came our way, but I have a note on my scorecard that two balls bounced off the scoreboard near our seats.

At the end of the game, we walked a short distance to the parking lot. Since this was the first time any of us had driven to the stadium, the traffic jam inside the garage caught us all by surprise. Writing this almost eight years later, I want to say that it took us 30 minutes to leave the garage. The reality was that it was perhaps half that time. We resolved never to drive to the stadium again. The trip home involved going back a different way from the one we used to get to the stadium. I don’t believe that this was our intended route, but it worked out. We got back to Manhattan and eventually back to the GW bridge for the trip home.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 1): car trip to Yankee Stadium

Perhaps the most memorable Yankee game we attended was on Friday May 26, 2000. I think this was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I got a telephone call that afternoon in my office from a good friend of mine. Her husband had just been offered four tickets to that nights game with free parking. The Yanks were playing a home series against the Boston Red Sox. I jumped at the chance for club seating. Now, the four of us had tickets for the Sunday night game against the Red Sox, and none of us wanted to pass up the chance to have such good seats. These seats are only available to season ticket holders. We thought it would be fun. What could be better for a baseball fan then a Yankee baseball in the Bronx against the Red Sox on Memorial Day weekend?

Our first adventure was driving to the Bronx. Our friends picked us up at our home. We were living not far from one of the exits to the New Jersey Turnpike. Given the fact that it was Memorial Day weekend and we had cross that bridge, otherwise known as the George Washington Bridge (GW Bridge), we allotted extra time for our trip to the Bronx. As we all expected, we ran into traffic perhaps a mile or so before the tolls at the GW Bridge. We were in what are known as the local lanes. The traffic was inching forward when we noted that a young man in a nearby car got out of the car, saying that he would be back in a moment. He climbed up the wall and disappeared. We entertained ourselves wondering where he was going, coming up with a few possibilities that I won’t go into here. A few minutes passed, more than enough time for him to do whatever business he was doing. The three of us (passengers) peered out the window waiting for him to return to the car. We were still close enough that the wonderer could have returned to his car. Several more minutes passed, and he did not return and we were beyond the last exit in NJ. We wondered what happened to him and how he would get to wherever it was that he and his friend in the car where going.

Our next adventure came as we prepared to cross the GW Bridge. Game time was beginning to creep up on us, and we faced more traffic. My friend’s husband knew how to get to Yankee Stadium from Manhattan. It went well, he knew the way and there was little to no traffic. He dropped us off near the ballpark before driving to the parking garage and joined us about fifteen minutes later. We went to our seats on the first base line: section D, box 73. I’ll write about the game itself tomorrow.

The first two Bees of Spring

I saw my first two Bumble Bees of this young spring season yesterday. I have two flowering shrubs , Andromeda (I think) on one side of my house where I always see Bees. I love watching the Bees. And today, I saw my third. She was hanging out on one of these same shrubs for a little while. My cat was fascinated as it gave him something new to watch on TV.

Summer of 1991

The summer of 1991 was a very busy time for me at work and school. Baseball was my comfort food that summer and early fall. The Yankees, while far from the greatness they were to display in the late 1990s were better than they were the year before when the finished in the cellar of the American League East.

When I was not working or studying, I was watching baseball or hiking. Oh, yes and there were household chores and that dribble.

Baseball played a very important role as summer turned to fall. I was getting a little stressed out over a difficult project at work  Baseballwas about the only thing that would calm me down. It is hard to explain. There was the comfort of going to Yankee stadium on Saturdays, watching the game and keeping score. In addition to enjoying keeping score as I watch a game, I hoped to do so correctly where my card matched the one in the paper the next day. Keeping score requires paying attention. There are no announcers telling you what is going on, so if you are not paying attention you are going to miss how a baserunner gets on base. For the whole point is to keep track of every pitch to every hitter. The Saturday games helped to take me away from the rigours of my exam preparation.

As my project neared completion, I took great comfort in following the 1991 post season. Before I cheat and look at my Baseball Almanac, I’ll say that either the Oakland Athletics or the Minnesota Twins won the World Series that year. Now I’ll go and look, yes the Minnesota Twins took the series against the Atlanta Braves, 4 games to 3. In what the Baseball Almanac called one of the great ones.

One of the players on the Minnesota Twins that year was a third baseman named Mike Pagliarulo. Mike Pagliarulo or “Pags” played for the New York Yankees in the 1980s going to the San Diego Padres before ending up with the Twins in 1991. I enjoyed cheering him on as he got a World Series Ring.

That same year, the Braves had a 24-year–old left handed pitcher, Mike Stanton. Mike Stanton played with Yankees from 1997 through 2000, the lefty out of our bullpen winning three World Series rings with the Yankees.

Spring flowers and trees almost ready

It seems like any day now the trees will leaf out. The buds on the dogwoods are larger. When I look at the pin oak outside my dining room window I can see very tiny oak leaves as they emerge. The daffodils are starting to bloom; the crocuses were in bloom for a couple of weeks now and are just past their prime. I am happy that they did not end up as deer or rabbit food. I know that there is a rabbit somewhere around here. I saw it last night near my driveway as I was coming home.

The grape hyacinths that I planted on the south side of the house are starting to come up. Most of the perennials are starting to emerge from their winter hibernation. Yesterday we had a warm early April day, shirt–sleeve weather. I went outside and played in the dirt for an hour, otherwise known as weeding.

I have often let these early signs of spring pass me by, waiting for the day when everything is in bloom and the deciduous trees have leafed out. I was too busy or too caught up in my own affairs to pay attention to the process plants and trees emerging from their winter sleep. It is pretty cool. I am looking forward to watching this process unfold.

People in the stands

The first couple of years we had our Saturday season tickets we had tickets in the upper deck behind home plate. These were decent seats about half–way up in nosebleed territory. For me part of the experience of attending a baseball game is watching the people around us in the stands. If your team is playing well then there is a special celebratory camaraderie. If they are not playing well, as was often the case during the time we had our season tickets, well there is the bond of hanging in during the hard times.

We soon began to recognize other nearby season ticket holders and other regular characters. Sitting in front of us was a “family” from Queens. I knew they were from Queens because we saw them on the subway on Saturday at one of stations where riders from one of the Queens lines transferred to our Bronx–bound “D” express train. From appearances, they were a married couple with an adult son. The older man always had recent stats on the visiting team including a press guide along with a small notebook where he recording information. He did this every Saturday for the two years we had these tickets. One Saturday we overheard him talking to his son about the Mets, leading us to believe that they may have regularly attended Mets games, perhaps a Saturday plan? Most of the time, the Mets and the Yankees are not home at the same time so it is conceivable that one could be regular attendees at both teams’ home games.

We wondered what this gentleman was doing with his notebook and visiting team guides. Was he a very serious baseball fan, a participant in a fantasy baseball league, or something else? We never did fid out.

There were other season ticket holders around us in the upper deck. Most were like us, out to enjoy a game, perhaps keeping a scorecard like I did. Some had a portable radio. They were young, middle–aged, and seniors, coming alone or with a friend, spouse, parent or a child.

A father and adult son were near by. The son would often engage in a running commentary about the game, along the lines of a radio or TV announcer. Perhaps some would this running commentary annoying, we found it entertaining.

Then there was an older gentleman who would walk around the stadium with a small pot that he would bang with a spoon. I don’t exactly remember what he would chant as he banged his pot, but others in the stand would get in the act. He would offer the spoon to people in the stands, especially children, who would bang on the pot and chant.

The third year we had season tickets, we moved down to the third–base side of the lower level. Most of the seats around us were taken by an every changing parade of groups. We wondered if the family from Queens still had their tickets. We saw them one Saturday on the subway platform and had our answer. We wondered about the man, who walked the stands banging his pot, we were reassured when we saw him.

Rookies

Most of the time we got to the stadium about 20 to 30 minutes prior to game time. Arriving at the stadium, there was a feeling of anticipation in the air on game day. Even during the 1990 season when they were cellar dwellers. It might be the excitement of watching the young players wondering if they might be the next breakout player or a flash in the pan. For example, Bernie Williams came up in 1991 when we had season tickets, and we saw him play at least twice in 1991 and once in 1992.

My scorecard for a game played on October 5, 1991 shows that he had 5 hits in 6 at bats with two RBIs in a twelve inning loss to the Cleveland Indians. He was in the game the first game we saw in 1992 against the NY Mets on April 4. This was in the days prior to interleague play when the Yankees and Mets would meet for a couple of preseason games. He lead off the game, according to my score card he reached first on an error. Kevin Mass batted him home. \

Kevin Maas was one of those “flash in the pan” players. He hit very well when he first came up. He came up in June of 1990, hitting 21 homeruns that year, and 23 the next years. His hitting slacked off drastically after that. Eventually, the pitchers started to figure out how to get him out, and he never again was the dominant hitter he was during his rookie year. But he was fun to watch in 1990, adding some excitement to a bad year when the Yanks finished in the cellar. According to my Baseball Encyclopedia he played four more seasons, finishing up with the Baltimore Orioles.

Another player who only played a few months in the majors was a right–handed pitcher named Wade Taylor. He game up in June of 1991 with another right–handed pitcher, Scott Kamieniecki. We say him pitch one game on June 22. He pitched for 7 and one-third innings giving up 5 hits, 4 runs, 3 earned runs, 2 walks and 6 strikeouts.

There are a lot of baseball players like Kevin Maas and Wade Taylor that don’t make it in the majors. Some, like Kevin Mass have their day in the sun, others are like Wade Taylor and only play in the “bigs” for a few months. Many would kill to have the chance to play in the majors.

Riding the subway to Yankee Stadium

I moved to New York City in the mid seventies and began watching or listening to Yankees games. For reasons that I won’t go into here, the road to becoming a Yankees fan evolved over the next fifteen years or so. What turned the corner for me was having season tickets to the Yankees to a Saturday plan for three or four years in the early 1990s.

About two and one–half to three hours before game time we would drive the short distance to the local light rail station, aka the PATH tubes into Manhattan where we would take the subway to Yankee stadium in the Bronx. Our transfer point from the PATH to the subway was the PATH station in the World Trade Center. We had one more transfer point, West Fourth Street in Manhattan where we would catch an “express subway train” to the Bronx. If we were lucky, the trip was a little more than one hour. If we were not lucky, it could be two hours. The usual travel time was a little more than 1.5 hours.

We would always see other Yankee fans on our ride to the ballpark, especially on the subway in Manhattan. The stop for Yankee stadium was the first stop in the Bronx and the subway would empty, sometimes literally, as we left the subway to go to the ballpark.

Most of the time the worst that happened was that we would have to wait for the subway. Going to the ballpark, was not so bad. Leaving the ballpark was another story. Remember that the ballpark is in NYC, and even if you had a car like we did, many take mass transit of some sort to the ballpark. So, at the end of the game, the crowds would descend to the subway station back to Manhattan. There were two subway lines to Yankee Stadium and both were equally crowded after the game.

If we were lucky, we would get to the subway platform just after a train arrived so the platform would not be crowded. Most of the time we were not lucky. We would get to the platform to find wall-to-wall people. Having lived in Manhattan for over four years in my early twenties, I learned some tricks to dealing with crowded subway platforms. One was to go the opposite end of the platform from the entrance. We would politely make our way to what was the southern most end of the platform, the least crowded end. Sometimes the least crowded end of the platform only meant that you were not standing in a sardine can. The worst was when it was hot and humid. Our subway was underground, no breeze, and it often smelled. The wait may have only been a couple of minutes, sometimes as long as ten or more minutes.

Sometimes the train that came along would be so crowded that we could not board the train. At other times, we would let the packed subway leave, gambling that the next one would be less crowded. Sometimes we would take the local train back to Manhattan. Once we got on the subway, people would be buzzing about the game. As you can imagine, the flavor of the buzzing depended on if the Yankees won.

I said that most of the time the worst that would happen was waiting for the subway on hot crowded platform with various subterranean odors. We never got on a subway that broke down, that happened to me once or twice when I lived in Manhattan. But late one Saturday night after a night game, something happened that had never happened before. We were on the local train from the Bronx that terminated at the World Trade Center. Our car was almost empty. A couple of stops before the World Trade Center we saw someone running through the train. Then we smelled a terrible odor. Someone had set off a stink bomb. Everyone got up and walked up a couple of cars to one that did not stink.

Behind homeplate

For my eleventh or twelfth birthday my Dad took me to baseball game. It was the second baseball that I had been to. He managed to get seats on the lower level behind home plate. I had a great time at the game even though we lost. My Dad taught me how to keep score at a baseball game. To this day, I can’t go to a baseball game without keeping score.

I did not appreciate at the time how wonderful those seats were. I remember thinking that it was a little disappointing to have to watch the game through the mesh screen behind home plate. What a snot I was. I hope that I had the sense to keep my mouth shut. I have been to quite a few baseball games since then and I there was only one time that I had seats that approached the quality of those seats. You can’t even get seats behind home plate in many ballparks as they are all spoken for by full season ticket holders

The best thing about that baseball game was going with my Dad. We had a great time.

As an adult I moved to New York City and then northern New Jersey and became a New York Yankees fan. We took my Dad to a New York Yankees game a couple of years before he passed. They were playing the Detroit Tigers, one of his favorite teams. He lovingly chided me for being a Yankees fan and proudly wore a Detroit Tigers hat.

When the baseball bug bit me

I remember when the when the baseball bug bit me. I was nine years old, the year I almost died. I spent a total of about nine weeks in the local hospital, first with a very serious bone infection in my left hipbone called Osteomyelitis. I came home for a couple of weeks before broking my hip on or about July 4, 1963 and was in the hospital for another six weeks.

The first hospital stay occurred over my ninth birthday. I was at my sickest on my birthday, throwing the nurses out of my private room when they came into sing happy birthday. I also had one of the few TVs in the hospital in my room. I know this because I have memories of being very sick and watching TV. I remember game shows and baseball. Bone pain is the worst possible pain. It is hard to explain but the sounds on the TV, the sounds of baseball and game shows gave me some comfort. It was like there was something outside of the pain and the fever that I could focus on.

I also remember the room. The door was to the left of my bed. The bone infection was in my left leg, so I either lay on my back or on my right side. Lying on my left side where I would face the door was not going to happen.

I got better; I had a wonderful pediatrician, a real sweetie. I continued to watch baseball, game shows, comedies and cartoons.

During the first hospital stay, my parents moved to a new house across town. I remember being disappointed because he rented a pick–up truck for the move. I desperately wanted to ride in the pickup trip but I was not allowed to leave the hospital so I missed my chance. My Dad drove the truck to the hospital where I could see the truck from the window next to my bed in the four–bed ward that I was in pediatrics. It wasn’t the same.

I got out of the hospital sometime in early June, before school let out for the summer. I got out of the last few days of school. This suited me just fine because I hated school. When I got out of the hospital my family gave me another birthday party. Grandfather gave me some birthday money and I used it to buy a baseball glove.

The house we moved to was a really cool old farmhouse vintage mid 19th century with a wrap around porch. The house next door was on the corner and was owned by a nearby private school. The school rented the house out. The tenants when we moved in had two boys, Bebo was a year or two younger than me. Bebo was a nickname, I don’t remember his birth name. Bebo had an older brother named Rob. I think that Rob was sixteen or seventeen because I have it in my head that he drove a car.

So, I would hang out outside on my lawnchair in either my yard or Bebo’s yard with my sister, Bebo, and our basset hound. My leg was weak, so I could not move around a lot. After being in the hospital for a couple of weeks, the last place I wanted to be was in a house. Rob was nice to me and we probably talked about something, but we did not pay that much attention to each other.

I loved my baseball glove. I think I even slept with that glove. Whenever possible, I’d sit in my lawnchair and play catch with whomever else I could snag. Bebo was easy to snag, so he was a frequent partner. I spent as much time as I could outside, so I don’t really recall how much baseball I watched during this time. But I must have watched some games.

On or about July 4 we went swimming at a local swimming club. I remember this because it felt wonderful to actually move around. That is the night I fell and broke my hip. The pain was even more awful then the Osteomyelitis. I remember the pain and the whole neighborhood must have heard me. I found out later that Rob was especially upset at hearing my screams before my parents could get me to the hospital.

After I was readmitted to the hospital, I spent a couple of days in a private room. I was in traction with weights off my left knee and ankle. I was to remain in traction and in the hospital for six weeks. I have good memories of the private room because I faced the door of the room. Since I had nowhere to go, I got intimately familiar with whatever room I was in. It was probably a couple of days after my fall when I saw Rob walk through the door carrying a small magazine, the 1962 yearbook for the local baseball team. I remember being surprised to see him but the baseball yearbook put me at ease. We talked baseball for awhile then he left. Rob and Bebo and their family moved shortly after Rob’s visit. I never saw them again. And I will always remember them.

I found out later from my parents that Rob was very shook up when he heard me screaming in pain the night I broke my hip. My parents said that he wanted to come and visit me in the hospital before they moved. He would have known that I loved my baseball glove because I was never without it, so he would have known just what I would like.

I don’t remember how many times I read the yearbook from cover to cover. I knew every player and their stats. There is an advantage to being a sick kid in for a longtime stay, so I got one of the very few televisions in the hospital. In the mid sixties, there were many afternoon baseball games on TV, and it was the height of the baseball season. So, I watched baseball that summer. It did not take long for me to get hooked. I quickly learned the game. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. And someone brought me my baseball glove. The local team was not very good, but that didn’t matter, the magic of baseball took over.

And I always remember Rob visiting me in the hospital with the baseball yearbook.