Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 4-23-20

Thinking about Canaan vs. Falls Village

Cynthia Hochswender’s introduction to the Northwest Corner in the March 26th Lakeville Journal (p. A2) gave me a profound sense of déjà vu as she twice sidestepped the Canaan/Falls Village/North Canaan conundrum. Having grown up in Falls Village, I’ve had occasion to explain it to outlanders many times.

For the past 50 years, I have lived in the Town of Ledyard, in the southeastern corner of Connecticut. A similar situation arose here in the 18th century because, simply put, the town, then known as North Groton, was “too far to go to church.” There was no separation of church and state in Colonial Connecticut. There was an “established church,” now called “Congregational,” and the state was divided into Ecclesiastical Societies created by the state Legislature. In 1724, 36 residents of North Groton petitioned the General Assembly to form a new Ecclesiastical Society. Citing “extreme difficulties we are under in attending ye places [of worship] by reason of our great distance and … for want of a sufficient number of horses,” the petitioners had their treaty honored and a Second Ecclesiastical Society of Groton was founded in January 1725.

The creation of a new town had its roots in a separatist sentiment within the Second Ecclesiastical Society, beginning around 1813. There was initially great opposition, but repeated referendums narrowed the margin until in 1834 the measure passed. The new town was incorporated effective June 1, 1836. Rather than taking the name North Groton, however, the residents chose a Revolutionary War hero and martyr, Colonel William Ledyard, to memorialize, despite the fact that he was actually born in “south” Groton. The Colonel led Colonial forces defending Fort Griswold in the 1781 Battle of Groton Heights. They were outmatched and outmaneuvered, in part thanks to local turncoat Benedict Arnold, a Norwich native. According to tradition, Col. Ledyard surrendered his sword and was skewered by it at the hand of the British commander.

There’s no comparable remedy for confusion in the Northwest Corner, and it would be churlish to suggest that the “new” town of North Canaan, with Canaan, East Canaan and Canaan Valley within its boundaries, be renamed. My late mother, Gertrude “Bunny” Foster, had a solution, and I believe you’ll find her letter to the editor in The Journal archives. Her suggestion was simple: rename the Town of Canaan as “South Canaan,” the settlement that lies at its approximate geographic center.

Christopher “Kit” Foster

Gales Ferry (a village with the Town of Ledyard)

Hope springs eternal

My mother Victoria Lipsey was born on Chicago’s Ohio Street in March 1918 at the end of the War to End All Wars and just at the beginning of the so-called “Spanish Flu” and its rage.  Ohio Street, running west of Michigan Avenue’s now Magic Mile, was tenements and all that that word connotes.  

Her parents were Hungarian and Slovak immigrants, (Undocumented? What’s that word?) my grandfather convinced that he, AWOL from Dictator/Emperor Franz Joseph’s army, would be deported. He told my grandmother never to answer the door. It could be the man delivering the ice on his back; or it could be ICE about to break that door down.

My mother went on to live a happy and productive life and died peacefully at 92.

Hope, that thing with feathers, springs eternal.

Lonnie Carter

Falls Village

COVID-19 pandemic: What is to blame?

On this 50th anniversary of Earth Day our mastery over the Earth and its species has earned us something quite different than we were expecting. 

How did this happen? A bat in China bites a wildlife animal? Sells at a market. Infects someone. A global pandemic ensues engulfing the Earth with death and economic hardship not seen since the Great Depression.

But there is agreement though that the virus jumped from an animal to a human through what is called “zoonotic spillover.” 

Now on this Earth Day 2020 as we struggle to meet this pandemic we must not ignore this “spillover” factor and what has caused it. 

We defend human rights, but what of the rights of Nature, wild animals, natural habitats and our surrounding environment?

It is not surprising then that a UC Davis study of animal species that host viruses known to infect humans found, “Animals threatened with extinction by human degradation of their habitat, or through hunting and the wildlife trade, hosted twice as many viruses known to infect people, compared with species threatened for other reasons ….”

For centuries we have pushed at the natural world to fulfill our desires and economic needs; endeavours we praise as advancements, honor as accomplishments, elevate as progress and see emulated around the world. 

“Spillover of viruses from animals is a direct result of our actions involving wildlife and their habitat. The consequence is they’re sharing their viruses with us. In an unfortunate convergence of many factors, this brings about the kind of mess we’re in now,” says Christine Kreuder Johnson, lead author and director of the EpiCentre for Disease Dynamics, One Health Institute, from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, which released the study.

The economic result from that wheel of fortune that crushes our global environment daily is now painfully evident in another “spillover” factor — the 22 million jobs lost in the USA over the last four weeks. 

This Earth Day, above all else, we must not fail to recognize and address the reality that it is our dysfunctional relationship with Nature and our environment that is the root cause of this collapse of our health and economy. To move forward we must set an effective example as individuals and as a nation regarding how we interact with Nature and how we partner with it to fulfill our lives and fuel our economic needs.

This virus is now global and is forcefully showing us that we really must have a global strategy toward our relationship with Nature if we are to prevent a more destructive virus from evolving.

There is an old song lyric that says, “It’s Nature’s way of telling you, something’s wrong…” 

It’s telling us. We need to listen and act.

Bernard Re, Jr.

North Canaan

Coloring the past and future

Back in my middle school days, many decades ago, I loved to jump on my red bicycle and peddle my way downtown to our local library — even when the sky was blue and the sun shining. Sometimes, I’d go over and open the big World Atlas, lay it on a big oak reading table and marvel at those seven wildly differently shaped  continents all surrounded by the big blue oceans. Next, I might go over and pick up the local newspaper (the Greenfield Recorder) and see how the Red Sox did yesterday. My favorite book at the time was “The Red Badge of Courage.” My favorite animal was the blue whale. Back then, those two colors, red and blue, made a lot of sense — both of them.  

Later on, when I was in high school, I became fascinated about how one of the smartest people to ever live, Isaac Newton, figured out how to split sunlight into its wonderfully vibrant constituent colors (from red to blue and beyond) and analyze them in all sorts of ways. What a mind! Thinking about how wonderfully smart some people in history have been, to make the world what it is today, can kinda make you get red in the face with envy — if you think you’re the smartest person around, or blue — when you realize you’re not even close.  Back then, those two colors, red and blue, made a lot of sense — both of them.  

Later on, I moved to New York City to pursue a career in circus and stage. As a country boy, I always had an image of the “big (red) apple” in my mind’s eye as a place to go to have a challenging adventure. 

A big hit song playing endlessly on the radio back then was “Blue Bayou.” I remember going to all sorts of museums and movies and such, soaking up the culture in a big way. From Matisse’s own “blue period” to seeing the movie “Reds” on the big screen, I just drank it all in. Back then, those two colors, red and blue, made a lot of sense — both of them.         

Lately, there have been a few political leaders that are peddling a pie-in-the-sky notion that pulling up our socks and diving back head-first into the sea of economic challenges that await us is valorous. They’re spouting a spectrum of discontent with the scientific awareness that the virus doesn’t make it easy to be smart about such things. 

At the core, the palette required for seeding our national resurrection, from indigo to rosy, and our economic ink from crimson to noir, is much more about responsible civic and governmental pointillism than reactionary economic fauvism.  Tomorrow, I sure hope those two colors, red and blue, will still make a lot of sense — both of them.  

Michael Moschen

Cornwall