A file in the online version of the Kouroo Contexture … · 2013. 9. 1. · Toward the end of the last Ice Age, most of what is now New England was still under an immense sheet of

NEW ENGLAND IN GENERAL

“So long as the past and present are outside one another, knowledge of the past is not of much use in the problems of the present. But suppose the past lives on in the present: suppose, though encapsulated in it, and at first sight hidden beneath the present’s contradictory and more prominent features, it is still alive and active; then the historian may very well be related to the non-historian as the trained woodsman is to the ignorant traveller.”

— R.G. Collingwood, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHYOxford: Clarendon Press, 1939, page 100

Toward the end of the last Ice Age, most of what is now New England was still under an immense sheet of very slowly melting ice, like a mile in thickness, retreating from an edge that at one point had reached as far south as New Jersey. Vegetation was appearing on exposed surfaces: mainly tundra plants such as grasses, sedge, alders, and willows.

However, nearly all areas of the globe had climates at least as warm and moist as today’s.

In this “Paleo Period,” humans began to occupy the New England region sparsely, hunting mastodon and caribou. Spruce forests began to appear, followed by birch and pine. This period would last to about 8,000 BCE.

The beginning of the Younger Dryas. Abrupt cooling in Europe and North America, return of near glacial conditions; in the Near East, an abrupt drought, leading to retreat to oases, possibly related to development of agriculture as a coping strategy.

11,500 BCE

10,500 BCE

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

2 Copyright Austin Meredith


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Little information is available for the New England region during the Early Archaic Period. We know that oaks, pitch pines, and beeches were beginning to flourish. As the glacier melted, it deposited scraped up erosional debris atop the bedrock. Streams stemming from the melting glaciers formed valleys such as the Mill Brook valley. Enormous buried blocks of ice would eventually be creating water-filled depressions in the landscape. These “kettle ponds” would include not only Walden Pond, Fair Haven Bay, and White Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, but also Spy Pond, the Mystic Lakes, and Fresh Pond in Cambridge.

A stone projectile period has been found in the New England region, dating to this Middle Archaic period. Clearly, nomadic tribes of Paleo-Indians were moving into New England. Their spear points were made of flint imported from the valleys of the Mohawk River and Hudson River. They were traveling in dugout canoes along the coast of New England and following tributaries far inland. (At this point maize was beginning to be cultivated in Mexico. The flexible-shaft spear, thrown with a stone-weighted spear thrower now termed the “atl-atl,” was the common projectile.)

8,000 BCE

6,000 BCE

NEW ENGLAND

White

Walden

Fair Haven

NEW ENGLAND

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3


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During the Late Archaic period, humans were hunting game (caribou?) and marine mammals (seals, etc.), and fishing and gathering, in the region of New England. A warmer, drier climate had been encouraging the seeding of white pine, red pine, oak, and beech trees, which slowly had replaced the post-glacial jack pine, fir, and spruce that had been covering the area.

4,000 BCE

NEW ENGLAND




http://www.archive.org/stream/elegantextractso00knoxuoft#page/746/mode/2up



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The vegetation of what is now New England has become predominantly hardwood, the fresh growth attracting increasing numbers of white-tail deer, moose, black bear, beaver, and turkey. A new tribal people had been attracted to homestead in this environment, the “Late Archaic Indians,” builders of circular homes that ranged from 30 to 66 feet in diameter.

From this point until about 700 BCE on the North American continent, during what we refer to as the “Terminal Archaic” period, there was manufacture and use of soapstone pots, and widespread trade connections. It is possible that a northward migration of Iroquoian-speaking peoples caused separation between eastern and central Algonkian-speaking peoples.

During the Early Horticultural period encompassing what some call the Early and Middle Woodland Periods, a period which would last from this point until circa 1,000 CE, there was in the New England area an increased use of ceramics and, in some local areas on western Long Island, the beginnings of a corn/beans horticulture. Trade was widespread throughout the Eastern Woodlands. Shellfish and deer were important food resources. Shell beads and copper beads appeared. Tobacco and pipes became common. Chestnut trees were naturalized in the area.

3,000 BCE

1,700 BCE

700 BCE

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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Taking a page from the playbook of Karl Jaspers, the 3d Century BCE has been referred to, by Karen Armstrong in THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION: THE BEGINNING OF OUR RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS (Knopf, March 2006), as the Age of Ritual. This next period, the 2d Century BCE up to the year 220 BCE, would be referred to by her as the Age of Empire:

(This presumably gives you a general idea of what such Eurocentric simplifications are worth.)

New England natives began growing corn and producing clayware. This period is known as the Ceramic-Woodland period and the tribespeople are termed Algonquians. They constructed wigwams of woven mats and also long houses that might harbor several families. Sizable villages grew around cleared fields; stockades were often erected as a defense against neighboring tribes.

300 BCE

circa 900 BCE-circa 800 BCE Age of Ritual

circa 800 BCE-circa 700 BCE Age of Kenosis

circa 700 BCE-circa 600 BCE Age of Knowledge

circa 600 BCE-530 BCE Age of Suffering

530 BCE-450 BCE Age of Empathy

450 BCE-398 BCE Age of “Concern for Everybody”

circa 400 BCE-circa 300 BCE Age of “All is One”

circa 300 BCE-220 BCE Age of Empire

NEW ENGLAND






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There appears to have been some population shifting from southwestward, possibly caused by hostile conflict with Iroquoians. During this Late Woodland period there was widespread adoption of horticulture in southern New England. The Wampanoag who were encountered by the European intrusives of the 16th and early 17th centuries were in this phase of their culture.

During the Late Prehistoric tradition, several cultures arose in different parts of Ohio. People lived in large villages surrounded by a stockade wall. Sometimes they built their villages on a plateau overlooking a river. They grew different plants in their gardens. Maize and beans became the most important foods (squash, another important plant, had been being grown since the Late Archaic).

In what is now North Carolina, people of the Mississippian culture in what we describe as the Piedmont region,

1000 CE

NEW ENGLAND






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were continuing to construct earthwork mounds or add onto existing ones. In the five to seven centuries preceding the initial European contacts, this Mississippian culture would produce large, complex cities and maintain farflung regional trading networks.






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Late Spring: As usual, the swarming of the 17-year New England cicadas Magicicada septendecim.

(It seems to me, Austin Meredith, important to bear in mind that although there probably weren’t any white people in New England, –although Old England had not yet heard of a new one, –although this and that, the place actually was there at the time in precisely the same manner and degree to which, say, England was there at the time — and people were there, messing around, and other forms of life were living there and doing stuff, and all that would be of significance to us — had we any way now to know about it. Paying attention to the like-clockwork return of this cicada swarm seems to be an appropriate manner in which this can be borne in mind.)

Anacreon’s Ode to the Cicada

1112

We pronounce thee happy, cicada,For on the tops of the trees,Sipping a little dewLike any king thou singest.For thine are they all,Whatever thou seest in the fields,And whatever the woods bear.Thou art the friend of the husbandmen.In no respect injuring any one;And thou art honored among men,Sweet prophet of summer.The muses love thee,And Phoebus himself loves thee,And has given thee a shrill song;Age does not wrack thee,Thou skilful – earth-born – song-loving,Unsuffering – bloodless one;Almost thou art like the gods.




This isn’t really by Anacreon. It is by Henry Estienne II, and is from the CARMINUM POETARUM NOUEM, all but portions of which are now lost, which he would publish in Geneva in1554.

This is Anacreon.



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1129

1146

1163

1180

1197

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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Between May 21 and June 20, most likely on May 29th, Durante degli Alighieri (for us, Dante) was born into the important Alighieri family of Firenzi (for us, Florence).

During this late spring, the 17th-year cicadas Magicicada septendecim were swarming in what eventually would become New England.


1214

1231

1248

1265

1282

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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1299

NEW ENGLAND






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Maize agriculture would be being introduced in what would become upstate New York during the 14th century, producing a population surge in the longhouse villages, and bringing other changes as well.

The 14th Century would suffer from four periods during which summer temperatures were markedly cooler than average. (The longest of these four cold spells would last for a couple of decades, from about 1343 to about 1362.)

Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The first such overwash fan that has been revealed dates to the period

1300






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John Bartram’s 1751 diagram of an Iroquois longhouse and the town of Oswego.






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1295-1407.NEW ENGLAND






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1316

NEW ENGLAND






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1333

1350

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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1367

1384

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The first such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, and the second dates to this period of roughly the first half of the 15th Century, specifically the period 1404-1446CE.

1400

NEW ENGLAND






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1401

1418

1435

1452

1469

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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Pedro Alvarez Cabral was claiming Brazil for Portugal and Férnandes was exploring Labrador. By the time of their 1st contact with Europeans, the Pequot would have situated themselves in what is now southeastern Connecticut from the Nehantic River eastward to the border of what is now Rhode Island, but at this early point the Pequot and the Mohegan were still a single tribe migrating into eastern Connecticut from the upper Hudson River Valley, perhaps from the vicinity of Lake Champlain.1 Situated as they were behind Long Island, the Pequot and their neighbors would be off the intrusives’ radar screens have little contact with Europeans before 1600, but the effects of the European presence in North American would begin to reach them soon afterwards. Warfare precipitated by the start of the French fur trade in the Canadian Maritimes would sweep south at the same time that a sickness left among the Wampanoag and Massachusett by English sailors on a slave raid would depopulate New England in three separate epidemics between 1614 and 1617. The Pequot and Narragansett would emerge from this chaos as rivals for the status of dominant tribe in the area.

Like other Algonquin in southern New England, the Wampanoag were a horticultural people who supplemented their agriculture with hunting and fishing. Villages were concentrated near the coast during the summer to take advantage of the fishing and seafood, but after the harvest, the villages packed up and moved inland and separated into winter hunting camps made up of extended families. Since New England was heavily populated before the epidemics began, these hunting territories were usually defined to avoid conflict. Ownership passed from father to son, but it was fairly easy to obtain permission to hunt on someone else’s terrain. The Wampanoag were organized as a confederacy with lesser sachems and sagamores under the authority of a Grand Sachem or Metacom. Although the English often referred to Wampanoag sachems as “kings,” there was nothing royal about the position beyond respect and a very limited authority. Rank had few privileges and sachems worked for a living like everyone else. It should also be noted that, in the absence of a suitable male heir, it was not uncommon among these people for a woman to become the sachem (queen or squaw-sachem).

1486

1500

1.“Pequot” is From the Algonquin pekawatawog or pequttoog meaning “destroyers.” This group was also called Pekoath, Pequant, Pequatoo or Sickenames (by the Dutch), Pequod, Pequin (Sequin), Pyquan, and Sagimo. It had allied itself with the Eastern and Central Metoac, Manchaug (Nipmuc), Massomuck (Nipmuc), Monashackotoog (Nipmuc), Quinebaug (Nipmuc), Menunkatuc (Mattabesic), Pequannock (Mattabesic), Quinnipiac (Mattabesic), Siwanoy (Wappinger), and Western Niantic.

NEW ENGLAND






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1503

NEW ENGLAND






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Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The 1st such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, and the 2nd dated to the period 1404-1446CE. The third such overwash fan dates to approximately this year (plus or minus 30 years).


1520

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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1537

NEW ENGLAND






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(This was the year in which Henry Estienne II would attribute a poem on the cicada to someone named Anacreon, an ancient Greek author of erotic poetry and drinking songs, in CARMINUM POETARUM NOUEM published in Geneva. Only portions of this work survive.)


1554

NEW ENGLAND





Do you suppose Henry Thoreau supposed this poem actually was by Anacreon?

This is Anacreon. In Heaven? --Don’t ask.

This is Anacreon’s good little buddy.



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1571

1588

1605

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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During this year and the following one, two voyages of Frenchmen, accompanied by Samuel de Champlain, would be reaching as far south as Cape Cod.






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Here’s one of Champlain’s sketches of the Cape:

Several maps would be produced of Wampanoag Algonquian-speaking settlements, such as this one at “Malle






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Barre” (future location of the English settlement of Nanset).

Some trading and skirmishes would occur.NEW ENGLAND

CARTOGRAPHY






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August 14-15: The 1st hurricane to be recorded in New England’s written historical record was a fierce one indeed, arriving just before dawn on the 14th of August to blow the roofs off the cabins of the Europeans, and sink their ships at sea and in the harbors.2

1622

1635

NEW ENGLAND






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The Reverend Richard Mather and his family were aboard the James bound for the New World (he would become the minister in Dorchester), and the previous night they had made their way by moonlight to what they had taken to be a quite safe anchorage among the Isles of Shoals “and there slept sweetly that night, until break

2. Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The 1st such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, the 2nd to the period of roughly the first half of the 15th Century, and the 3rd to approximately 1520CE (give or take a few decades). The 4th such overwash fan obviously dates specifically to this historic storm of the 14th and 15th of August, 1635.

NEW ENGLAND






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of day.”






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The next morning, however, would bring this great summer hurricane, the most violent storm of the 17th Century along this coast, causing the loss of the Angel Gabriel on Pemaquid Point and the loss of the Avery shallop at Thatcher’s Island off Cape Ann. The James was driven toward Star Island with her sails in tatters after losing three anchors and cables in quick succession. Entirely out of control, it missed the ledges of the island by only a few yards before being driven on by the winds into deeper water: “We shall not forget the passage of that morning until our dying day.”

An old man who was accustomed to go to sea in a small boat accompanied only by his dog, which he had taught to do rudimentary steering at his command, was sailing down the Ipswich River on the morning of the 15th when he was warned of the prospect of the approaching storm. He responded with profanity and he and his dog sailed out never again to be seen.

When the intrusives and the indigenes of the mainland came out of their hiding from the elements after this big one, thousands of trees were down, and some of those trees still standing had had their branches so entangled as to appear to have been braided. As the storm had made its way up through Buzzards Bay, a number of native Americans had taken refuge in substantial trees but had nevertheless been drowned as the sea was raised by the winds by about 20 feet.

This hurricane was the one that knocked down many trees in the district that would later become the town of Concord, which would make it very difficult later for the Selectmen to beat the bounds of the town once per year as was required by the town’s Body of Laws. They would have to clamber over many huge old crossed trunks in the swamps, left by this big wind from before their town was even imagined.

A building which had been taken by the sea at Smuttynose Island later would wash ashore on Manamoyik Cape Cod, and would be in such good condition that the Cape people would be able to repair it and put it to use.






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The bark Angel Gabriel wrecked off Pemaquid Point, Maine. One of the passengers, John Bailey, had left his wife, his son Robert, and one or more daughters behind in England, planning to send for them after he became established in the New World. Although he would survive the storm and the shipwreck, after hearing of what had happened to the Angel Gabriel his family would be afraid to follow him, and they would never be reunited. Here is a partial list of the vessel’s passengers (there’s a complete list on a plaque at Pemaquid):

• Captain ROBERT ANDREWSShip’s Master Ipswich

• JOHN BAILEY, Senior, a weaverfrom Chippenham, England Newbury • John Bailey, Jr. born in 1613• Johanna Bailey (possibly came on a later ship soon after)

• HENRY BECK

• (Deacon) John Burnham• Thomas Burnham• Robert Burnham

• RALPH BLAIDSDELL of Lancashire York, Maine • Mrs. Elizabeth Blaidsdell• Henry Blaidsdell

• WILLIAM FURBER

• JOHN COGSWELL, age 43 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• Mrs. Elizabeth (Thompson) Cogswell, age about 41

Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• Mary Cogswell, about 18 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• William Cogswell, about 16 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• John Cogswell, about 13 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• Hannah Cogswell, about 11 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• Abigail Cogswell, about 9 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• Edward Cogswell, about 6 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• Sarah Cogswell, about 3 Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• Elizabeth Cogswell, infant Westbury Leigh, Wiltshire Ipswich• SAMUEL HAINES, about 24Apprentice to John Cogswell probably Ipswich, later Dover Point • WILLIAM HOOK• HENRY SIMPSON• JOHN TUTTLE Dover Ipswich, later Dover NH






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The first preserved report of sightings of the swarming of the cicadas Magicicada by English colonists to the New England area. H. Oldenburg reported: “There being found innumerable little holes in the ground, out of which those insects broke forth in the form of maggots, which turned into flyes that had a kind of taile or sting, which they struck into the tree, and thereby envenomed and killed it.” Note that either this is a delayed report of sightings from a decade earlier, or, it was not the 17-year swarm Magicicada septendecim that was being reported, but some other of the cicada swarms. The account was in part fanciful and fearful, Professor Emeritus Charles Remington of Yale University notices, since cicadas do not sting trees but merely harmlessly deposit eggs.


1639

1656

1666

1673

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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1690

1707

1724

1741

1758

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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In later years Henry Thoreau will make no mention of remembering the hearing of this din. (That’s because the swarm did not reach all the way over to eastern Massachusetts, its eastmost point being in central Connecticut.)

1775

1792

1809

1826

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND

NEW ENGLAND






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December: Henry Thoreau was definitely aware of the existence of the Magicicada cicada swarms, for in his manuscript for “Moonlight,” after the comments “Every melodious sound is the ally of Silence — a help and not a hindrance to abstraction and “Certain sounds more than others have found favor with the poets only as foils to silence.,” he inserted Henri Estienne II’s “Anacreon’s Ode to the Cicada” from CARMINUM POETARUM NOUEM, published in 1554.3


1838

3. An inclusion Thoreau would suppress either because he had transferred it to NATURAL HISTORY OF MASSACHUSETTS as a comment on insects or while he was in the process of transforming this into the ending of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS. This is the person in the same generation of the Genevan publishing family Étienne who had published, in 1572, the TLG which would have been utilized by Thoreau and which would still be in use into the 19th Century.





Do you suppose Henry Thoreau supposed this poem actually was by Anacreon?

This is Anacreon.



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You will note that he would not have been doing this because he had been listening to the cicadas, because this is the wrong season of the year for the cicada swarm and also because he hasn’t heard the singing of the 17-year cicada since the late spring of 1826, at which point he had been but 8 years old. He never mentions that he remembers having heard it then, and, when this phenomenal New England swarming occurs again in the late spring of 1843, he still makes no entry in his journal. I’ve been trying to figure out why Thoreau, who as a 1st-order approximation seems always to have been interested in anything and everything, didn’t pay particular attention to this every-17th-year swarming of the cicada. These swarm years have of course been being documented, since they were already regular like clockwork in the days of the Pilgrims. It seems to be some sort of neural circuit in the cicada nymph’s subesophageal ganglion that ticks off the cycles of warmth and cold until it reaches 17 seasons. Then a different system, perhaps partly based on temperature and partly on pheromones, kicks in to determine the precise day and hour of the venturing aboveground for purposes of mating. The reproductive strategy followed here, of course, is that of overwhelming predatory birds with food, so that they are already gorged and so that there are still a plenty of insects left to attract one another through their fiddling, and mate, and drop the eggs that will create the next generation of nymphs to spend 17 years sucking on their tree roots.

June 13, Tuesday: Specimens of the 17-year swarm of cicadas (Magicicada septendecim) were being collected in the vicinity of New Haven, Connecticut by Cornelia Lawrence Hillhouse, a privileged daughter-in-law of the early city planner James Hillhouse. The samples she collected near West Rock eventually would become the oldest specimens in the Peabody Museum’s vaunted collection of more than 1.5 million New England dead bodies.

1843






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Henry Thoreau made no mention in his written materials about personally hearing the New England swarm other than one chance mention in a letter he wrote home from Staten Island, nor did he comment on having also heard it in 1826 as an 8-year-old. Probably the reason why he makes no personal mention is that the swarm stopped then as it does now, in western Connecticut, and never made its way as far east as Concord and the Boston vicinity — we do know for sure from the pages of A WEEK and WALDEN that he had knowledge of the existence of that 17-year variety of locust:

A WEEK: It is worth the while to see the country’s people, how theypour into the town, the sober farmer folk, now all agog, their veryshirt and coat-collars pointing forward, — collars so broad as if theyhad put their shirts on wrong end upward, for the fashions always tendto superfluity, — and with an unusual springiness in their gait,jabbering earnestly to one another. The more supple vagabond, too, issure to appear on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the nextday to disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust,in an ever-shabby coat, though finer than the farmer’s best, yet neverdressed; come to see the sport, and have a hand in what is going, — toknow “what’s the row,” if there is any; to be where some men are drunk,some horses race, some cockerels fight; anxious to be shaking propsunder a table, and above all to see the “striped pig.” He especiallyis the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets and hischaracter into the stream, and swims in such a day. He dearly lovesthe social slush. There is no reserve of soberness in him.






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Late Spring: Swarming of the 17-year New England cicadas Magicicada septendecim.Again Thoreau made no mention in his written materials about the swarm, nor comment on having also heard it in 1826 and in 1843.

1860

WALDEN: How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idleand musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As ifone were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man tohoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practiseChristian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought!Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency ofmankind. This generation reclines a little to congratulate itselfon being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and Londonand Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks ofits progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction.There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and thepublic Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam contemplatinghis own virtue. “Yes, we have done great deeds, and sung divinesongs, which shall never die.” –that is, as long as we canremember them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria, –where are they? What youthful philosophers and experimentalistswe are! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a wholehuman life. These may be but the spring months in the life of therace. If we have had the seven-years’ itch, we have not seen theseventeenth-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with amere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delvedsix feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We knownot where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half ourtime. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established orderon the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitiousspirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needleson the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from mysight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts,and hide its head from me who might perhaps be its benefactor,and impart to its race some cheering information, I am remindedof the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stand over me thehuman insect.

NEW ENGLAND






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October 4, Monday: At Te Porere in New Zealand, the Maori led by Te Kooti were decisively defeated by the Colonial militia and their Maori allies.

From that morning into the following day there was an Atlantic Category-2 hurricane (the Saffir-Simpson Scale: sustained winds in the 96-to-110mph range). The strong winds on the “righthand” side of the storm track caused such a large amount of forest blowdown that in following summers there would be an increased forest fire hazard. On the “lefthand” side of the storm track, huge amounts of rain were unloaded in the northern New England states through to eastern New York State. According to the Farmington Chronicle, one Maine farmer recorded 8.25 inches of rain. Virtually every bridge in Maine went out and over a million logs escaped their booms and went downstream. Close to a hundred lives were lost. Roads and railways were blocked by fallen trees and debris.

Many vessels blew ashore in the Eastport, Maine-St. Andrews, New Brunswick area including the barque Genii with the loss of eleven lives.

1869






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This storm, unfortunately, blew down the protective netting which Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, the Massachusetts researcher associated with Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College, had caused to be erected above the five acres of woodlands in which he was experimenting with various supposedly-silk-producing moths including the “European” gypsy moth. (Eventually this guy Trouvelot would feel like he needed to move out of his neighborhood, because he considered that it had become distressing — due to the denudation of its trees.)4

Late Spring: Swarming of the 17-year New England cicadas Magicicada septendecim.


4. Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The 1st such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, the 2nd to the period of roughly the first half of the 15th Century, the 3rd to approximately 1520CE (give or take a few decades), the 4th to the historic storm of the 14th and 15th of August, 1635, and the 5th to the historic storm of September 23, 1815. The 6th such overwash fan obviously dates specifically to this historic storm of October 4/5, 1869.

1877

1894

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September 21, Wednesday: British mediator Lord Runciman recommended to Prime Minister Chamberlain that the Sudenland be transferred to Germany without a referendum.

Czechoslovakia agreed to an Anglo-French plan which included the cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. President Benes announced the agreement in a communique critical of Czechoslovakia’s “friends” Great Britain and France.

Spanish leader Juan Negrín advised the League of Nations that all International Brigades were to be withdrawn from the fighting.

Poland demanded that Czechoslovakia hand over the Teschen (Cieszyn) district.

In the worst weather disaster for New England in its history, the 4th most fatal in all US history, the Category

1911

1928

1938

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Four hurricane to be known as the “Long Island Express” struck seven states in seven hours and 682 died, 433 of whom were Rhode Islanders.5 Drifting dead, typically wearing heavy boots, were initially estimated from the air by counting the tops of heads that could be seen bobbing along the surfline. The downtown of Providence flooded 17 feet above its street surfaces. All the enormous mature elm-trees surrounding the Newport “cottage” named “The Elms” were blown down.6 In Arlington, the steeple of the Pleasant Street Congregational Church was toppled. Most of the remaining isolated mature white pines that had been planted in the sandy loam by Henry Thoreau in what had been his beanfield in Walden Woods during his residency on Walden Pond, those that had not burned in that railroad fire in the 1890s, isolated as they had become by fire and standing only in sandy soil, were upset by the winds, which were measured to occasionally gust up to 183 miles per hour — with the exception of one grand old tree which could still be seen from a distance.7

5. Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The 1st such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, the 2nd to the period of roughly the first half of the 15th Century, the 3rd to approximately 1520CE (give or take a few decades), the 4th to the historic storm of the 14th and 15th of August, 1635, the 5th to the historic storm of September 23, 1815, and the 6th to the historic storm of October 4/5, 1869. The 7th such overwash fan obviously dates specifically to this historic storm of September 21, 1938.6. 15% of the mature trees in New England were destroyed.7. Professor Walter Roy Harding was said to be able to lead walkers through the woods to the base of this remaining tree.

WALDEN: I planted about two acres and a half of upland; and as itwas only about fifteen years since the land was cleared, and Imyself had got out two or three cords of stumps, I did not giveit any manure; but in the course of the summer it appeared by thearrowheads which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nationhad anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white mencame to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted thesoil for this very crop.

THE BEANFIELD






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Securely held in the root system of one of the white pines which had been blown over –although no-one would recognize this until Roland Wells Robbins, an archeologist who lived on the old Cambridge turnpike, would inspect this eroded root system on November 11, 1945– were some of the stones from the foundation of the chimney of Emerson’s (Thoreau’s) shanty:

A tree snapped and fell over the roof of the Concord bank, and one of the Doric pillars was knocked off its






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front portico.

The “Texas” House, already damaged by fire, was destroyed during this hurricane.

The Great Elm on Monument Square, the one known about town as the “Whipping Post Elm” despite the fact that it had never been used in such a manner, was severely damaged.

In New Bedford, there was a storm surge of between 12 and 16 feet, and damage amounting to what today would be at least $3.5 billion.


1945

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THOREAU RESIDENCES

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1962

1979

1996

2013

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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: September 1, 2013

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST




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Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.



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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request wehave pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out ofthe shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). Whatthese chronological lists are: they are research reportscompiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data moduleswhich we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.To respond to such a request for information, we merely push abutton.






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Commonly, the first output of the program has obviousdeficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modulesstored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, andthen we need to punch that button again and do a recompile ofthe chronology — but there is nothing here that remotelyresembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know andlove. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,and as the programming improves, and as funding becomesavailable (to date no funding whatever has been needed in thecreation of this facility, the entire operation being run outof pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweakingand recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation ofa generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward andupward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place your requests with <[email protected]>.Arrgh.




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Documents

A file in the online version of the Kouroo Contexture … · 2013. 9. 1. · Toward the end of the last Ice Age, most of what is now New England was still under an immense sheet of