Rosetta and Maria Mitchell: Pioneering Astronomer from Massachusetts

The timing of the end of the Rosetta mission--the first spacecraft sent to rendezvous with a comet--was fortuitous. On September 30, after two years' study of 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the European Space Agency's orbiter joined the lander module Philae on the surface.

The following day, October 1, was the anniversary of an earlier astronomical milestone. On that date in 1847, 29-year-old Maria Mitchell became the first woman to make a telescopic sighting of a comet. She did so from the roof of the Pacific Nantucket Bank, where her family resided  while her father was chief cashier. Mitchell had learned astronomy from her father, a talented amateur scientist himself, and from the study that she had undertaken on her own, working as a librarian at the Nantucket Atheneum next door.

In 1840, William Mitchell laid out the town's meridian line, marked with stone posts on the sidewalk in front of the bank.

Maria Mitchell's discovery brought her fame and helped to launch a new career: she became the first female member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1848) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1850), as well as one of the first professors hired at the newly founded Vassar College (1862). A feminist, she became  president of the American Association for the Advancement of Women in 1875.

Today the family's 1790 house, operated by the Maria Mitchell Association, preserves many of her possessions and celebrates her legacy. In 2010, Heather Huyck, editor of  Women's History: Sites and Resources, listed the house among her ten favorites.

The Best Columbus Bio You Never Read (and it's German)

Every year, as Columbus Day rolls around, it seems that the critique of the explorer and reluctance to celebrate his holiday grow. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, though if carried to an extreme, it can lead to a rather impoverished understanding of what is in fact a very complex history. It's a complex historiography, too: appraisals of Columbus's actions and importance have fluctuated. His elevation to true heroic status is a relatively recent development. What is more, even in that phase, not all biographies were hagiographies.

A mid-century modern German Columbus bio

It therefore seems a good moment to recall one of the more intriguing books on Columbus, today largely forgotten. In 1929, German novelist and journalist Jakob Wassermann (1873-1934) published his Christopher Columbus: the Don Quixote of the Seas [thus, the English translation; the German original uses: Ocean], the result of more than two decades of attempting to penetrate the mind and character of the explorer.

In developing his portrait, Wassermann assiduously studied all the contemporaneous published sources. The opening of the book is a subtle meditation on the challenge of taking the historical past on its own terms. As he explains, our natural instinct is to impute to the character all the traits and accomplishments that become visible only in retrospect, when he has achieved fame--whereas he can in fact only be understood through the constraints of his own time and existence. Fame, Wassermann said, is "a process of crystallization," in which much "dross" is necessarily removed. He also likened judgments on historical persons and epochs to badly worn old coins, whose value we only rarely pause to investigate.

The age is revealed to the reader in all its splendor and horror

In a review of multiple authors, under the heading, "Imaginative Biography from Germany," the New York Times wrote:

Jakob Wassermann frequently stresses the fact that we of today are quite unable to conceive how great the Genoan's imagination must have been, how enormous the courage which enabled this man and his companions to venture out into dreadfully mysterious wastes of the sea with a few ships and inadequate instruments. Whether his character study of that extraordinary man, a study based on modern psychological methods, is even approximately accurate, Wassermann modestly points out, it is impossible to determine. But from the description given by this expert prober of souls the reader gains a clear picture of Columbus. He must have borne a close relation to Don Quixote -- a magnificently imaginative dreamer and yet narrow-minded, stubborn and quarrelsome, absolutely unshakeable in his pursuit of his life's aim, but often losing in a moment because of the disagreeable traits of his character, everything he had gained. Thus Jakob Wassermann describes him, not as an unsullied hero and a martyr to his great idea, but as a human being with all the failings of humankind, with all the narrowness and lack of understanding of his age; and this, coupled with his immortal deeds, brings him closer to us. The age is revealed to the reader in all its splendor and horror, in its mad desire for gold, in its childlike piety and the terrible but also childish cruelty which enabled its people to massacre a nation as a boy pulls off the legs of a frog.

Not so dumb, then, after all.

The book does not seem to be in print or available online in the 1930 English translation, so you'll have to inquire at a good library. If you read German, it's not only in print, but also available online via Spiegel. Check it out.



Resources


Past posts on Columbus Day:

• Removing Columbus from the Calendar (2014)
• My Two Cents' Worth for Columbus Day. A Postage Stamp as Metaphor (2012)

And You Thought Halloween Was Scary? How About Teaching Bad History About Witchcraft??

Often as not it's bad history rather than scary costumes that forces historians to turn away and scream in terror every Halloween.

I was dismayed to see that Hampshire College--admittedly, the Spiritual Life Center and Community Partnerships for Social Change, rather than an academic class--was sponsoring a screening of one of the worst pseudohistorical documentaries for the occasion.

"The Burning Times" is a 1990 piece in the National Film Board of Canada's "Women and Spirituality" series. It has developed a popular following for all wrong reasons, which will become immediately obvious:

This documentary takes an in-depth look at the witch hunts that swept through Europe. False accusations and trials led to massive torture and burnings at the stake, and ultimately to the destruction of an organic way of life. The film questions whether the widespread violence against women and the destruction of the environment today can be traced back to those times. 

The intention of my Hampshire colleagues was good, I am sure: to add some intellectual content to a holiday long known here for its substance- and sex-related excesses, to highlight the historical oppression of women, and to acknowledge neo-paganism within the scope of spiritualities in the college community.

Unfortunately, the film is a slick and sloppy New Age compilation of errors, half-truths, omissions, and exaggerations.

Given that "The Burning Times" describes the city of Trier as "French" even though all the signs on the buildings shown are in German and it belonged to France only briefly--from 1794 to 1815, never during the Middle Ages--an attentive viewer might think to question the film's larger claims such as the characterization of the witch hunts as "the women's Holocaust" (at 14:19).

I remember one colleague here in the Five College Consortium lamenting to me that whenever students saw "The Burning Times," it took him at least half a semester to unteach the idiocy they had absorbed. Some years ago, when I saw that WGBY, the local Public Television station, was showing this sorry film during a pledge drive (adding insult to injury), I went so far as to call them up and explain that I was therefore not going to donate any money that year.

Yes, it's that bad.

The work of any professional historian will suggest how much more complex the reality was.

Even a glance at David Hall's appropriately titled essay on "Witchcraft and the Limits of Interpretation" (New England Quarterly, 1985) should make anyone pause before making sweeping generalizations covering many centuries and countries.  But his piece is rather heavy going.


For those seeking the bird's eye view, Brian Pavlac, author of Witch Hunts in the Western World, helpfully lists:

Ten Common Errors and Myths about the Witch Hunts, Corrected and Commented

1. The Witch Hunts were an example of medieval cruelty and barbarism.
2. The Church was to blame for the Witch Hunts.
3. The Witch Hunts specifically targeted women.
4. The Witch Hunts were an attempt at "femicide" or "gendercide," meaning the persecution of the female sex, equivalent to genocide.
5. The Witch Hunts were all alike.
6. Millions of people died because of the Witch Hunts.
7. People condemned during the Witch Hunts were burned at the stake.
8. During the time of the Witch Hunts, witches actually existed and worked magic.
9. In modern usage, the term "Witch Hunt" can be applied to any persecution of a group of people.
10. Modern witchcraft/magick/wicca is a direct descendent of those practices done by people during the Witch Hunts of 1400-1800.

(detailed explanation of each here on his Women's History Resource Site).

Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance deal specifically with the film:

Overview:

We are not going to win many friends in the Neopagan communities with the following essay. However, we believe it to be accurate. It is a story that needs to be told.

The facts are that almost all of the information that is generally accepted as truth by the Neopagan community about the "burning times" is wrong:

• The total number of victims was probably between 50,000 and 100,000 -- not 9 million as many believe. 

• Although alleged witches were burned alive or hung over a five century interval -- from the 14th to the 18th century -- the vast majority were tried from 1550 to 1650. 

• Some of the victims worshiped Pagan deities, and thus could be considered to be indirectly linked to today's Neopagans. However most apparently did not. 

• Some of the victims were midwives and native healers; however most were not. 

• Most of the victims were tried executed by local, community courts, not by the Church. 

• A substantial minority of victims -- about 25% -- were male. 

• Many countries in Europe largely escaped the burning times: Ireland executed only four "Witches;" Russia only ten. The craze affected mostly Switzerland, Germany and France. 

• Eastern Orthodox countries had few Witch trials.[....]

• Most of the deaths seem to have taken place in Western Europe in the times and areas where Protestant - Roman Catholic conflict -- and thus social turmoil -- was at its maximum.

Any questions?

If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that changing historical facts is no way to redress historical injustice or bring about historic change. Even would-be radicals need to do their homework.

No Brakin' Akin

Akin update

After all the uproar over Representative Todd Akin's astonishingly obtuse and insensitive comments about "legitimate rape," pregnancy, and basic science, I wondered, half-rhetorically, what else there was to say—and finally came up with a historical angle.

Now, just when I thought there was nothing more to add, Mrs. Akin has intervened, somehow managing to plumb new moral depths by portraying her husband as a rape victim, and in the process mangling American history.

The Washington Post reports:

Lulli Akin, the U.S. Senate candidate’s wife, has compared his abandonment by party bosses to rape.
In an interview with “The National Journal,” she first described the move to get her husband to step down from the Senate race in Missouri as “tyranny, a top-down approach.”

She went on to say, “Party bosses dictating who is allowed to advance through the party and make all the decisions – it’s just like 1776 in that way.”

That was when colonists “rose up and said, ‘Not in my home, you don’t come and rape my daughters and my … wife. But that is where we are again.”

This time, I am literally at a loss for words.

Speaking of Bad Science

Speaking of bad science ("the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down”), sometimes something is so bad that it's good—particularly when it actually is intended as a joke.

At any rate, I always enjoy reading the Tumblr and following the Twitter account of "Fake Science," which, as it explains, is a "100% Fact-Free Alernative" "for when the facts are too confusing."

Smithsonian has a nice little profile this week.

Unfortunately, some people have no sense of humor: the Houston school system recently banned Fake Science's book version as something "not permissable [sic] for you to distribute or your students to have."

Problem is, with all the bad science and scientific ignorance surrounding us today, it's getting harder to tell the parody from the reality.

My Take on Akin: The Republicans' Dismal Science

 Are the Republicans leading us back into the seventeenth century (or beyond)?

The Rape of the Levite's Concubine, from:

The history of the Old and New Testament: extracted out of Sacred Scripture 

and writings of the Fathers...translated from the Sieur de Royaumont, by several hands;

 supervised and recommended by Dr. Horneck, and other orthodox divines (London, 1711) 

The papers and web were filled with denunciations of Representative Todd Akin's asinine remarks about "legitimate rape" and pregnancy. In fairness, he was not saying that "rape" as such was legitimate. Rather, as far as I could tell, he was using the word, "legitimate," in the sense of "genuine": i.e. trying to say that, when a woman is clearly forced to have sex against her will, she cannot become pregnant. That is ignorant and offensive for another whole set of reasons:  unacceptably narrowing the definition of rape, while betraying an abysmal understanding of science as well as current social and political standards (the more so, as it is all tied up with regressive ideas on reproductive freedom). But wait, it's worse. He sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

At any rate, despite the fact that so much had already been said, I thought I would add some historical context. It's no mystery, but (no pun intended), I found it in a historical mystery set in Restoration England.

Read the full story in The Propagandist: "Republicans. Confidently Leading America into the 17th Century."

As a bonus, you can also see there Jonathon Narvey's take on a nice little video clip of Bill Nye the Science Guy: "Creationism is Anti-American."

Confusion to our enemies!

Earthquake and Hurricane Clean-up

The communities of the northeast are still cleaning up after the flooding that hit parts north and west of here particularly hard. This afternoon, when I was driving to and from Westfield via I-91 and I-90 on the way to the annual "Pyrapalooza" (more on that later), I still saw lighted highway warnings of detours for travelers attempting to head west to destinations such as Shelburne Falls and Savoy. And I spoke with acquaintances who live in New York just west of the Massachusetts border. Both of them work in the public sector and have been involved in clean-up efforts. They told of devastated small-torn centers, with whole rows of buildings either washed away or flooded so badly as to require virtually complete reconstruction if not demolition. The husband had just come off a string of twelve-hour shifts and was exhausted.

Actually, though, my topic today is more figurative than literal.

When the twin disasters struck within days of each other, I was curious to see how many idiotic statements about divine wrath, just punishment, and the like, would crop up.

The answer seems to be: surprisingly few. After all, the earthquake hit hardest in the Washington, DC, area, and the hurricane was particularly destructive in the Northeast. Could it be so hard to see God's hand in the devastation of the heartland of "big government" and the proverbial liberal (Volvo-driving, quiche-eating, etc.) establishment?

To be sure, Michele Bachmann got some grief for remarks she made about two such natural upheavals in quick succession being a wake-up call about out-of-control government spending, but in fairness, she was making a clumsy attempt at humor. She says enough nutty things (especially about American history: 1, 2), that it would be uncharitable as well as unjustified to go after her for this one. It is a "target-rich environment," as they say in the Army.

By contrast, Pat Robertson did not disappoint:

"Ladies and gentlemen I don't want to get weird on this so please take it for what it's worth," Robertson said.

"But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America's power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God," he continued.

"Now there's a crack in it, there's a crack in it and it's closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention," he said.

"It seems to me symbolic," Robinson said. "When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic. Is this symbolic? You judge."

Now, the comparison with the Crucifixion seems forced and (although I am perhaps not fully qualified to judge) almost blasphemous. Still, at least the DC damage is verified. According to the Gospels, the Crucifixion was accompanied, as well, by an earthquake and an eclipse. The great historian Edward Gibbon raised some questions about all this in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic world, to those evidences which were represented by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses? During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest part of a year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendor. The season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age. 

Abridged translation into modern idiom:

Dude! So, there were all these great scientists back then, and none of them, like, noticed any of this?! What's up with that? Just sayin'.

The report went on to conclude that it was unclear why Robertson would want God to damage the National Cathedral, as well. Actually, it's perfectly clear. That ecclesiastical edifice belongs to the Episcopal Church: Aside from the fact that he would have no natural sympathy for a mainline church with liberal proclivities, he was outraged in 2006 at at the appointment of a Presiding Bishop who denied that Jesus was the only path to God (and favored ordination of gays and acceptance of same-sex marriage). Pinnacles were bound to fall off, though why it took five years for the wrath of God to build to this stage, and why it was not more ferocious, well, that may be less than evident. As we say, He works in mysterious ways.


From the vaults:
For the record or the hell of it, here are the posts that I wrote in response to superstitious and nasty verdicts on the Haitian earthquake.

• On the Earthquake (13 Jan. 2010)
• Who's Being Diabolical Here? Pat Robertson Blames Earthquake on Revolutionary Haiti's Pact With the Devil (13 Jan. 2010)
• Haiti Update (8 Feb. 2010)
• Chilean Earthquake: The Devil's in the Details, or: Kleist vs. Robertson (resist [P]at answers) (2 March 2010)

The Hurricane Track Through the Northeast

Amherst is fortunate in having not only an outstanding emergency response team, but also an outstanding IT department, led by Director Kris Pacunas, who, together with GIS Administrator Mike Olkin, has made it possible to put the latest technologies to use in the service of planning as well as communication and data management. Our GIS (Geographic Information Systems) are particularly robust, and offer residents information not only on properties and zoning, but even street trees, sewers, and cemeteries.

The Valley is also home to a lively and informal Valley GIS network, whose members, drawn from government, academe, and other areas, gather together outside of work to share tips on technology and data sets.  They were therefore on top of the evolving earthquake hurricane reports and helped to circulate information in the community.

Here is a fine representation of of the track of Hurricane Irene and its precipitation, prepared by Andy Anderson of Amherst College.

Here, from the US Geological Survey, is further information on the hurricane, as well as the August earthquake.

Resources:

• The US Geological Survey offers this handy overview of what GIS does and how it works
• a recent video explains the role of the military in developing GIS

Shaken—and Stirred: An Earthquake and a Hurricane in One Week?!

I missed our late-spring tornadoes, but I was here for the latest outbursts from Mother Nature. An earthquake and a hurricane in one week: even though we think of ourselves as special, that really has to be some kind of record for Amherst.

Actually, I still almost missed the earthquake. "No earthquake shook the town," Louisa May Alcott said in a different context. I didn't notice anything. Evidently, I was wrong. I joked that it was because I had been taking part in a discussion of books and our minds were therefore not on earthly things. In point of fact, though, when I went back over the chronology, I realized that I was probably in my car, driving from Amherst to Hadley. I had heard a CNN news anchor on satellite radio announce that they were cutting to a picture of the Capitol because a magnitude 5.8 earthquake had recently been registered in the DC area. I could of course joke that I didn’t notice the quake because I just thought it was our lousy Amherst roads that were causing my car to shake, rattle, and roll, but (a) I was on a newly paved stretch, and (b) besides, that might irritate Town Manager John Musante and Director of Public Works Guilford Mooring, who are very proud (as am I) of the new Street Improvement Plan that is finally addressing the deferred maintenance on our roadways. I’ll instead attribute my lack of awareness to driving a heavy wagon with a smooth ride and fine handling.

 a more serious "seismic event": God causes the earth 

to swallow up Korah's rebellious faction (Numbers 16:28-34). 

Baroque illustration from:

Johann Jacob Scheuchzer, Physica Sacra . . . (1731-35)

Once it became clear that no one had been killed, the tension abated and jokes began.

Although science websites published serious information about this event and earthquakes in general (1, 2, 3, 4), some other learned authorities loosened up a bit. Even the Library of Congress got into the game, devoting its Sheet Music of the Week feature to an “All Shook UpEdition,” displaying items from popular dance tunes to liturgical music.

The Jewish Daily Forward reported that a lunch for seniors in a Washington synagogue had to be interrupted when the building was evacuated. More serious, perhaps:

No one had yet arrived for a bris scheduled for later in the afternoon. “Fortunately, the bris hadn’t started yet,” said Easton. “That would not have been a good combination. We hope there aren’t any aftershocks,” he added.

That reminds me of the old Saturday Night Live spoof of the Lincoln automobile commercial (and conveniently allows me to complete the circle of reference to my having been in a well-engineered car at the time of the seismic event; see how that works?).

As in the case of other breaking news stories, however, Twitter became the prime forum for discussion. Tweeps competed to see who could come up with the best photographs of the devastation, such as here, in Philadelphia and DC. And of course, there were plenty of verbal jokes: about earthquakes in general or about comparative toughness in coping with them. Buzzfeed ran a feature on "The Best Twitter Responses to the Earthquake" (sample: "I felt that earthquake last week" - Brooklyn hipster). Here, in no particular order, some favorites from the general Twitter stream:

(1) "East Coast shaken, not stirred. #whyisaneastcoastearthquakelikeajamesbondmartini "

(2) "Glass of champagne tipped over in Martha's Vineyard. Obama not harmed."

(3) "Guess we should have been more specific about wanting a government shake up"

(4) "There was 5.8 earthquake in Washington. Obama wanted it to be 3.4, but the Republicans wanted 5.8, so he compromised."

(5) "Massive post-quake looting underway in Manhattan! (Wall St traders allowed back into their offices)"

(6) "East coast: 'Holy crap.' West Coast: 'Amateurs.' Midwest: 'You still can't drive in the snow.'"

(7) "Earthquake damage here limited to my TV, which has been taken over [by] reporters babbling endlessly about nothing."

As Patrick Johnson of the Springfield Republican quipped, "This is shaping up to be one of the funniest earthquakes ever. Keep those one liners coming, everyone." And they did.

It was relatively easy to joke about the earthquake because it did relatively little harm.

It seemed, though, that the hurricane would be the real thing.

Still, it did have its humorous aspects, as well.  For a start, there were all the jokes about how to prepare for the disaster (the usual: what to stock up on, how to spend your last hours on earth, etc.). In addition, though, there was something new. I had been amused watching New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempt to make his periodic announcements in Spanish as well as English. One could truthfully say that he spoke Spanish without an accent: because he pronounced it just like English.  Evidently, I was not the only one who found the effort on his part at least as amusing as it was sincere.  A character named ElBloombito soon appeared on Twitter, pretending to be the Mayor and issuing encouraging announcements in Spanglish.

A few choice samples:

• Lo siento el briefing is el late. No subwayo y yo have to walko.

•  No elevatorador serviso en el high rises por que no electrico para movo y no rescue. el sucko para you.

• Ay Ay Ay! Yo forgoto evacuato el isla de Rikers! My bado.

• Nueva Yorko will get through el hurricano por que nosotros el besto personas de la earthador.

• Muchos trees esta falling downo. No stando under los trees. Que splat!

• El hurricano is Categoryo 1 y still vamosing towards Nuevo Yorko. Cuidado!

• Los cans del trasho por favor to turn them back overo. Gracias.

• No criminales comito el mucho crimes last noche. Poco few arrestados compardo to el average. Felicidades!

• Yo soy muy proud of los effortos del el departementes de policitas y el flamo. Tu es el pride of Nuevo Yorko.

 The hurricane itself proved to be no laughing matter.

I followed its progress hurricane via the internet and television (more the former, actually).  Certainly, there was a great degree of fear at the outset.  By this afternoon, as the storm headed inland and declined in severity, the chatter on Twitter had largely been reduced to two voices: (1) “Boy, this was a lot of hyped up nonsense,” and, in response (2): “Shut up, asshole.” As someone observed, well, it was a big deal to those who were affected.  As of this moment, there have been 21 fatalities, this, above and beyond the losses of property and disruptions of daily life. Eventually, a consensus seemed to emerge around the idea that the hurricane had been pretty bad, but what irritated people was the hyped up coverage, and journalists who talked about the story 24-7 but really had nothing much to say (see above, under: earthquake). It was good to know that know that, in the end, both good sense and good humor prevailed. 

Here in Amherst, it was hard to know what to expect.  My own hunch was that we would escape more or less unscathed (Given our situation in a valley, with the Holyoke Range to the south and the Berkshire Mountains farther west, it can be hard to predict how we will be affected by a given weather phenomenon. Sometimes, thunderstorms and blizzards hit us, whereas at others, they deliver a knockout to our neighbors but leave us alone.) That said, one certainly cannot make policy on hunches, and in any case, we have seen that far less violent storms can wreak havoc simply by bringing down a few tree branches near power lines. One winter, our house was without heat and electricity for days for that reason. In this case, predictions were complicated by the fact the storm path came farther inland than some had expected. The eye had been predicted to follow a path between Boston and Worcester (i.e. still well to the east of us), but in the event, it moved west of us, toward Albany.

shoppers buying up bottled water at Stop & Shop in Hadley Friday afternoon

shelves of bottled water emptied fast

Trader Joe's had to restock shelves of bottled water; here, bread shelves empty out, as well, on Saturday evening

The Town of Amherst prepared to the fullest, as it had to. I played no part in this, but as a member of the Select Board, I did receive regular updates on the progress of our plans from Town Manager John Musante, who shared information on weather conditions, developing local emergencies, and action steps. Beginning on Friday, an emergency management team assembled to deal with all possible occurrences. It included the Town Manager, Police and Fire Chiefs, the Directors of Health, Public Works, and Conservation and Planning, as well as other staff responsible for safety and Town facilities. There were preparations for every potential aspect of the crisis, from communications and power supplies, to removal of fallen trees, and emergency medical services and shelter.

The Town issued an Emergency Declaration at the end of the workday on Friday, detailing expected weather conditions, and emergency contact numbers and procedures. The emergency alert system directed key information to individual residents via telephone messaging. Periodic announcements updated the community on the most severely affected streets or neighborhoods, power outages, and changing weather forecasts (1, 2, 3). We in Town government received, in addition to the public announcements, periodic internal updates.

Here’s a snapshot of the situation.

My main concern was that there might be widespread and extended power outages. In the end, only 127 customers (1% of the population) were without electricity, and by early evening, power had been restored in more than two dozen cases. There was flooding in some of the “usual” problem areas, resulting in temporary street closures, but no worse. Here, scenes from Haskins Flats and East Leverett Road:

[images courtesy of Town Manager John Musante]

The torrent at the Puffer’s Pond dam, near where I live, gives just a hint of what we escaped (see the story on Shelburne Falls):

[video courtesy of Town Manager John Musante]

Some of our neighbors suffered as much or worse. Compare our paltry 127 darkened homes with the total of 319,631 Massachusetts electric customers who were without power, and the 4 million along the east coast as a whole. Our flooding, too, was minimal. Rising river waters forced evacuations in Huntington and Chester, to the south. Closer to home, I-91 between Deerfield andGreenfield was closed, and in Shelburne Falls, the Deerfield River rose so high that the waters swamped the famous Bridge of Flowers. Late this evening, the Connecticut River was threatening Northampton. And that's not all. The ten inches of rain flowed into the rivers, which aren't expected to crest until Tuesday. Meanwhile, the eastern half of Connecticut was still reported to be without power at midnight tonight. The situation is even worse in Vermont. I am told that CNN was the only network still covering the hurricane live by 11:30 p.m.—which means Vermont. (Maybe it is trying to make up for its slowness in covering the fall of Tripoli.)

We were twice lucky: lucky in that the storm passed over us without doing serious harm, and lucky that our Town’s emergency management team was impeccably prepared for the worst.


Update Monday afternoon:

And again, it is not over:  Shelburne Falls (see above) was hardest hit, and Deerfield and Greenfield are still suffering from flooding. In the latter, for example, a golf course is awash in toxic sewage: what officials describe as "poison water" moving at a speed of 4-6 knots.


Tuesday updates:

Last night, Town Manager John Musante reported to the Select Board on the Town's response to the hurricane. We "came through," he said, "in very, very good shape. "We're very fortunate, very lucky," certainly more so than out neighbors to the north and west. There were no reported injuries, and only 6 or 7 temporary street closings due to flooding or fallen branches. The roughly 125 residences that lost power had it restored by the next day. Town buildings were not damaged.

Mr. Musante stated that he was "very, very pleased at how prepared we were for the storm," and he thanked citizens for heeding Town advice and staying off the roads so as to reduce danger to themselves and facilitate the work of emergency responders. He had the highest praise for Amherst's emergency team, led by Fire Chief Tim Nelson, which ensured "tremendous cooperation" among between public safety teams, the Health Department (which worked with the Red Cross), Public Works (DPW), and others. Every branch of Town government did its job: IT ensured continuous communication, the Animal Welfare Officer assisted farmers with livestock problems. The University of Massachusetts was part of the picture, ready to put its facilities at our disposal if things had worsened.

Going forward, he explained, DPW would be continuing street clean-up and dealing with some 20 downed town trees. The continuing concern, however, was water in the wake of the heavy rains. That water drains into rivers and streams, which are not expected to crest for another day or so and pose an often unappreciated danger. "Be smart in the days ahead," he advised residents, advising them to "stay safe and stay away from the high water."

Select Board Chair Stephanie O'Keeffe reported being deeply impressed with what she saw when she attended one of the emergency response meetings on Saturday: "ever base was covered.," "The Town was really just on top of all these things, and I want to compliment and thank you very much."  It was "an excellent exercise in preparedness and readiness."


Further selected coverage:

As of today, some 4,000 western Massachusetts residents were still without electrical power. Threats arising from the rains—first, flooding and, particularly in our immediate area, health hazards through contamination—remained the most pressing concern.

Springfield Republican, 30 August:
• AP: "Helicopters rush food, water to Vermont towns"
• S. P. Sullivan, "Sen. Ben Downing: Flooding of roads, bridges and culverts remains a concern in the Berkshires after Irene"
• John Appleton,  "Hurricane Irene flooding devastates several Western Massachusetts farm crops"

• George Graham, "Shutdown of Greenfield's wastewater treatment plant sending wastewater into Greenfield and Connecticut rivers"
• Patrick Johnson,  "Irene has gone but problems remain; Western Massachusetts towns waiting to get full measure of damage"
• "Editorial: Calm after the storm - Lessons from Irene"

Daily Hampshire Gazette, 30 August

• AP: "Irene brings worst flooding in century to Vermont"

Daily Hampshire Gazette, 31 August

• Chad Cain, "Threat of more flooding subsides, most roads re-opened"
• Chad Cain, "Area residents warned about contamination of rivers after Irene"

• "Slideshow: Local scenes from Tropical Storm Irene"

Spaced Out. 20 July 1969: Moon Landing; 21 July 2011: End of Last Space Shuttle Mission

Many of us have childhood memories of staying up all night to watch the first moon landing, excited that we were able to witness history being made. 

The word, "bittersweet," however, seems an appropriate one to characterize the end of the space shuttle program, which coincides with the anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing in 1969. It is sad that it in one way marks the close (for the foreseeable future) of our "manned space program" and, in another, reminds us of its mindless perpetuation: science on autopilot.

The other day, as I watched a grim debt-ceiling countdown clock ticking down on CNN, I was reminded of an earlier age and earlier countdown clocks:  when we were kids and there were only three networks, every manned space launch was a big deal. In fact, I recall days on which the teachers would wheel a television (black and white, of course) on a tall metal cart into the classroom so that we could watch the blastoff. And when a giant Saturn rocket was being wheeled out to the launch pad readied for a moon launch, the nightly news reports might show a clock that, like the current one, measured a week or days rather than minutes and seconds.

From countdown to blastoff to countdown to fiscal meltdown: how are the mighty fallen.

roving around the moon: when manned space exploration was still exciting

a souvenir of the last manned mission to the moon

from the moon to the earth: Apollo becomes a taxi

The space shuttle should have been the next great adventure. Indeed, all of us who were enthralled by Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" hoped to see the promise of routine NASA trips to and from a space station, even if not quite the regular PanAm space station commuter flights so (now it seems) naïvely depicted at the iconic beginning of that classic film. Like many a boy, I was excited by the idea of a reusable space vehicle, and so I built and repeatedly launched the Estes "Orbital Transport" model rocket (1, 2).

In fact, I came across the old model when cleaning out my old things at my mother's house some years ago.

It turned out even the grown-ups were naïve. Pan Am, unable to make it even here in earth atmospere, went out of business in 1991, exactly ten years before 2001. And in 2011, ten years after 2001, the "space station" is a glorified collection of tin cans rather than the huge and luxurious rotating city that we once imagined.

The manned space program was one of the glories of human endeavor, and yet, in our day, it also reminds us of the limitations of human judgment and government policy. One doesn't have to be a total opponent of the endeavor to acknowledge that it at times substituted symbolism for substance and persistence for purpose. Clearly, it was essential to learn how to transport humans safely to and from near and outer space, and the sheer heroism of the early effort was transfixing. Still, critics compellingly argue, manned exploration and manned space flight in general tended, over time, to become ends in themselves, increasingly unable to justify the means.

As impressive as they were, the shuttle missions embodied this dilemma. The scientific and technological results barely if at all justified the cost in dollars—and, in the long run, human lives. The only American fatalities associated with the ambitious, fast-paced, and heroic race to the moon occurred on the ground, in the Apollo 1 fire that killed astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee on the launchpad in 1967. The Soviets lost four cosmonauts on the ground and in the air. By contrast, we lost two full shuttle crews—14 human lives—in the course of what should have been routine service and scientific missions. That's something to think about.

I still remember very clearly where I was on the occasion of the two shuttle tragedies. On the day of the "Challenger" launch, I happened to be at my apartment in the morning because someone was coming over to see me on business.  When he left, I turned on the tv to check the news before going to the library—just in time for the launch. On the second occasion, I was watching what I expected would be a normal broadcast of a shuttle landing (I found it hard to resist any detailed coverage of the missions) on a lazy Saturday morning when the reports suddenly suggested that something was wrong and the "Columbia" vehicle had disappeared. Although the destruction of the "Challenger" became one of those emblematic moments "when everyone knew where they were when they heard the news," the less famous loss of the "Columbia stuck with me for a different reason. I was teaching a new Holocaust class as a guest professor at nearby Mount Holyoke College, and the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan Ramon, the son of Auschwitz Holocaust survivors, had taken with him on the shuttle a reproduction of drawing by a child from the Terezín ghetto in the former Czechoslovakia. The image, by young Petr Ginz, depicted our planet as seen from a lunar landscape and, according to Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust memorial from whose collections it came, "attests to his aspiration to reach a place from where the earth, which threatened his life, could be seen from a secure range." I had planned to talk about it in class that week, as an example of both the particular and universal meaning of the Holocaust. Petr Ginz was gassed in Auschwitz in 1944, at the age of 16. As fate would have it, the "Columbia" burned up on the 75th anniversary of his birth.

Two catastrophic failures of shuttle vehicles in missions that should have been as routine as Kubrick's Pan Am flights brought home the tragic irony. The problem was that the shuttle was intended to be cheap, simple, and safe: It proved to be none of those.

Physicist Bob Park of the University of Maryland has been one of the harshest and loneliest critics of the manned space flight program, but the end of the shuttle missions provided a larger opportunity for retrospection and a platform for others likewise seeking to inject a critical (or at least analytical) perspective into a discourse too often reduced to either the triumphalist or the elegiacal.

As John Logsdon argued at the beginning of the month:

Forty years ago, I wrote an article for Technology Review titled "Shall We Build the Space Shuttle?" Now, with the 135th and final flight of the shuttle at hand, and the benefit of hindsight, it seems appropriate to ask a slightly different question—"Should We Have Built the Space Shuttle?"

After the very expensive Apollo effort, a low-cost space transportation system for both humans and cargo was seen as key to the future of the U.S. space program in the 1980s and beyond. So developing some form of new space launch system made sense as the major NASA effort for the 1970s, presuming the United States was committed to continuing space leadership. But it was probably a mistake to develop this particular space shuttle design, and then to build the future U.S. space program around it.

As he goes on to argue, the space shuttle became almost inextricably linked to the hard-to-justify space station. Operating costs were 20 times higher than projected, and because the vehicle was projected to be used for only 10-15 years but remained in service for 30, "NASA compounded the original mistake of developing the most ambitious version of the vehicle," the cost hampering the development of other projects.

He concludes:

I have previously written that it was a policy mistake to choose the space shuttle as the centerpiece of the nation's post-Apollo space effort without agreeing on its goals (Science, May 30, 1986).

Today we are in danger of repeating that mistake, given Congressional and industry pressure to move rapidly to the development of a heavy lift launch vehicle without a clear sense of how that vehicle will be used. Important factors in the decision to move forward with the shuttle were the desire to preserve Apollo-era NASA and contractor jobs, and the political impact of program approval on the 1972 presidential election. Similar pressures are influential today. If we learn anything from the space shuttle experience, it should be that making choices with multidecade consequences on such short-term considerations is poor public policy

Think about that next time politicians of either party wax enthusiastic about manned missions to Mars and the like. The world of interplanetary exploration remains as enticing as ever, but we ourselves may not need to be there every time, at least not just yet.

Still, it was a great ride. National Geographic offers "The Most Unforgettable Space Shuttle Photos" and Scientific American provides an overview of all 135 shuttle missions, spanning 30 years, in this 8-minute video:



The anniversary brought a whole crop of textual and visual retrospectives on the shuttle and the space program as a whole. A sampling:

• Tariq Malik, writing in Scientific American, provides an upbeat survey of the program in statistics rather than pictures ("NASA's Space Shuttle by the Numbers: 30 Years of a Spaceflight Icon"), while Logsdon asks, "As Atlantis Glides to Its Final Landing, What Comes Next?"
• Imperial College, London: four interviews on "the end of the shuttle era": Andre Balogh, Jonathan Eastwood, Tim Horbury, Nicholas Warner
•Caleb Scharf, "O NASA! My NASA!" (Scientific American blogs, 21 July)
• Scientific American offers a host of reporting and commentary under the rubric, "The End of the Space Shuttle Program."

Previous Posts

Last year's post mainly points to the fortieth-anniversary post in 2009, which includes a hilarious appearance by Bob Park (highlight: discussion of a balky space toilet) on the Colbert Report, as well as Wallace and Gromit.


August update

Nature magazine, too, now offers a collection of coverage on the history and legacy of the shuttle program

Hampshire College Creates Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies

Congratulations to my friend and colleague Salman Hameed, who recently established a Center for the Study of Science in Muslim Societies here at Hampshire College.

Salman, an astronomer whose specialized technical research involves star formation (among other things) is also deeply interested in the intersection of science and public life (the position that he holds was designed to bridge the gap between the sciences and the humanities). He was always particularly interested and eventually developed an academic concentration in such phenomena as the popularity of pseudo-science (e.g. UFO theories and the paranormal) and the resistance to real science. The latter notably includes the sudden resurgence of popular opposition to the theory of evolution. We think of the phenomenon mainly in the context of the Protestant fundamentalist west, but as he has shown (see an earlier post), it is also a growing force in the Muslim world.

Here, a sample quote:

“There is an increasingly urgent need for understanding and education about Islam and Muslim societies,” said Hameed. “This is perhaps the only center focused on examination of intersections and interactions between science and Muslim societies, (both in Muslim-majority countries and in Muslim diasporas in the West. It will bring together scholars working across disciplines on a significant set of questions and issues.”

At a time when science is becoming increasingly important in everyday life and for economic development, it is important to understand how it is understood and taught, and the role it plays in various Muslim societies, where religion plays a significant cultural role, Hameed said.

“This relationship with science is complex, and increasingly so, as science is freighted with issues of colonialism, modernity and progress, as well as moral and religious implications.”

Read the full story here (includes radio interview).  You can see more of Salman's work on Irtiqa:  A Science and Religion Blog (also blogrolled with updates in the right margin of this page).

Are You Smarter than an Eighth Grader (from 1895)?

Serendipity is a fine thing. Having just posted about graduate school applications and college admissions, I stumble across a document on adolescent learning standards from 1895 (h.t.: McK66).  The person who posted it, a professor of education, explains:

This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 from Salina, KS. USA.
It was taken from the original document on file at the Smoky Valley
Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS and reprinted by the
Salina Journal.

It covers five areas: grammar, arithmetic, U.S. history, orthography, and geography.  I'll reproduce just history here:

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of theRebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates:
1607
1620
1800
1849
1865

You can examine the rest for yourselves, and it's worthwhile, though possibly intimidating.  Can you "name and describe" Hecla, Juan Fernandez, and Aspiwall, or answer the question, "Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?" I'd like to give this one (from orthography) to my students (or, for that matter, a good many journalists, newspaper editors, and bloggers)

9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.

Hell, I'd be happy if they knew the difference between "its" and "it's."

And under geography, we find:

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?

We already know that the entire incoming Republican Congressional cohort would flunk that one.

28 October-1 November 1928: First Flight of the "Graf Zeppelin" from America to Germany

These days, as we take the ready availability of trans-Atlantic air travel for granted but agonize over extra charges for luggage, it's worth recalling the distant origins of that commerce.   In October 1928, the “Graf Zeppelin” (LZ 127) made the first intercontinental passenger airship flight. This postcard is one of the historical artifacts of that event.

It was the seventh voyage for the largest airship in the world:  776 feet long, with a volume of 3.7 million cubic feet.  The maiden flight took place on 18 September.  Transatlantic trips between the home base at Friedrichshafen, Germany, and the Naval Air Station at Lakehurst, NJ lasted about four and a half days.

Both legs of this voyage were marked by some drama.  On the way to America, from 11 to 15 October, the ship was nearly lost in a storm and suffered damage.  The return trip, which lasted from 28 October until the morning of 1 November, was noteworthy not only because it broke the record for fastest long-distance flight, but also because it included a nineteen-year-old stowaway from New Jersey who became something of an instant celebrity.

By contrast, the fame of Commander of the "Graf Zeppelin" was enduring. It was none other than Hugo Eckener (1868-1954), the Manager of the Zeppelin enterprise, who had taken over following the death of the ship’s namesake, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in 1917 (“Graf” just means Count, as in the name of the pocket battleship, "Graf Spee").  Eckener also piloted the LZ 127 on the first (and only) round-the-world flight by an airship in 1929 (sponsored by William Randolph Hearst), and the pioneering polar research flight two years later.  Fêted as a national hero under the Weimar Republic, Eckener was an opponent of the Nazis and even planned to run against Hitler for President in 1932.  After coming to power in 1933, they steadily reduced his role in the firm and public life.  After the war, he worked as a journalist and politician for the cause of international reconciliation. (Briefly condemned by the French for alleged collaboration with the Nazis, he was soon rehabilitated.)

Eckener's birthplace (today, a restaurant) in Flensburg, Germany

What few Americans (aside from devotees of aviation history) know is that it was in our country, while serving as an observer with the Union forces during the Civil War, that the Count began his aeronautical career. That much seems reasonably certain, attested to in an interview that the inventor gave toward the end of his life, in 1915.  The details, however, have always been fuzzy or in dispute.

I grew up learning that he had made his first balloon ascension in 1863 from the distinctive round tower at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, a site that I passed by every week, in my parents’ car, when I was a child.  Much later, I learned that the story was more complicated: perhaps less dramatic than we had been led to believe, but more intriguing as a case of historical myth-making. Rhoda R. Gilman did the painstaking and masterful detective work in an article for Minnesota History 45 years ago. Here’s the connection to today’s post: It was a Saint Paul newspaper article prompted by the maiden voyage of the “Graf Zeppelin” to the United States in October 1928 that apparently gave birth to the Fort Snelling story. Depending on the version at issue, either the ascent took place there or in Saint Paul. Either the balloon was free or tethered. Either the Count borrowed a balloon or had one made. The accounts even disagree on the nature of his mission in the area. As best we can tell, however, he simply joined the civilian residents of Saint Paul in taking advantage of the presence of a traveling balloonist (another German count, to be sure) for a brief joyride.

As Gilman puts it:

The vision of him as a paying passenger in a tethered balloon a few hundred feet over Seventh and Jackson Streets is a tame one. It lacks the drama of a daring young military attaché soaring off the Round Tower beneath an experimental gas bag. Nor does it have the dramatic overtones suggested by a German count ‘barnstorming’ under an assumed name. Yet for all that, the incident may have had large consequences for the history of aeronautics. As to whether or not it did, Zeppelin himself is the only possible witness. His own words [in the 1915 interview; JW] were: ‘While I was above Saint Paul I had my first idea of aerial navigation strongly impressed upon me and it was there that the first idea of my Zeppelins came to me.’

 (enlarge)

Fort Snelling would remain a site of great historic interest regardless of the Count's precise affiliation with it.   It was a key outpost on the northwestern frontier:   in the words of the Minnesota Historical Society, for several decades,  "the hub of the Upper Mississippi and the meeting place of diverse cultures." At times, that interaction was peaceful, but the fort was a site of vicious repression in the ignoble Dakota War in 1862.  Dred Scott married and raised a family while living at Fort Snelling as the slave of a military surgeon, and it was his residence there and in other free territories that moved him to sue for his liberty in the infamous court case.  All the while, the Fort trained soldiers for America's wars, from the conflict on the frontier through World War II.  Threatened by highway development in the 1950s, the once-isolated early nineteenth-century Fort became a National Landmark, and part of a National Historic Register District.  However, the modern Upper Post still in active use through World War II was allowed to deteriorate until, in 2006, it earned a spot on the National Trust's "11 Most Endangered Places."  But all that is part of another story


Postscript:

As for the cost of sending that postcard by Zeppelin: 53 cents was a great deal of money at that time: one cent, as one can see, was the cost of mailing a standard domestic postcard.  Adjusted for inflation, the mailing expense was the equivalent of $ 6.64 in today's dollars (measured by the Consumer Price Index), or $ 21.60, measured by the earning power of an unskilled worker).

Update July 2011:
The 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War—and of the Union Army Balloon Corps—has prompted renewed interest in the Zeppelin story.  Here, speaking, to USA Today, National Air and Space Museum Curator Tom Crouch tells the story matter-of-factly and correctly.

Related articles

• Scientists Use Flying Zeppelin to Film Whales (abcnews.go.com)
• Airship race round the world planned for 2011 (go.theregister.com)
• Scientists use hovering zeppelin to film whales (sfgate.com)
• America the airship: the first transatlantic crossing (telegraph.co.uk)
• 'Gas bag' (bbc.co.uk)