The good news is that the laurel is sensational

Some good news for a change.  The laurel on Mt. Riga is absolutely sensational this year.  We drove up the mountain between thunderstorms on Sunday and were dazzled by what we saw. There was a virtual sea of white and pink blossoms, on both sides of the Mt. Washington road above the dam. In some spots it was as if the flanks were peppered with popcorn. I don’t know what makes for an extraordinarily prolific year in the laurel department, but this surely is one.

Pink mountain laurel has long interested me.  In past years there has been a lot of it on Round Mountain, reachable by the red trail at the state line. Indeed, it has been such a deep pink that I have wondered whether it was a separate species.  I’ll bet it is gorgeous now.

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And then there is the less than good news department. Several well-connected strategic intelligence commentators are reporting that President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ohmert agreed on a strike against Iran to be undertaken before Bush leaves office. Supposedly the actual instrumentalities would be Israeli missiles and/or manned aircraft with American air and naval forces supplying logistical support.

This is the sort of scheme reportedly pushed by Vice President Cheney last year, but finally negated by the opposition of key high military officers who subsequently retired and have been replaced. Are there enough high officers now willing to put their careers on the line and resign rather than take part in what many of them must consider monumental folly likely to lock the United States into a much larger Middle East war?

This is not to minimize the serious differences with Iran, involving its active support for what we call terrorism. Many other nations, including Russia, are worried about the potential threat posed by an Iranian regime brandishing nuclear arms. But the problems could only intensify as the result of an attack seen to have been initiated or backed by the United States. It would require almost the full time of a new president, be he Obama or McCain, to salvage U.S. interests in the ashes. Once more to repeat Winston Churchill: Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.

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I don’t for a minute think that Sen. Chris Dodd is a crook, but I do think he looked bad in having accepted what looks like favoritism in real estate loans because of his position. His explanation has been unconvincing, for appearances do matter.   It takes a big man to say “I was wrong,â€� and that is what is required.

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The bridge problem affecting people in Falls Village and the Amesville part of Salisbury is vexing indeed. Obviously if the so-called iron bridge across the Housatonic River between Falls Village and Amesville is unsafe, closing it was necessary no matter what the inconvenience. The fact that this comes at the same time as the lane closure and detours caused by the long-planned replacement of the bridge across the railroad and river on U.S. Route 7 makes matters worse. Great patience will be needed and careful planning of the fastest safe routes for emergency vehicles.   

For my part, I think the iron bridge is quaint and I hope that it can be repaired and repaved even if this is not efficient. The bridge is part of the unique scenery of the area. It happens that I had a small part in the previous effort to repair the bridge, in the early 1980s as I remember.

The then-Salisbury first selectman, Charlotte Reid, asked me as a town perambulator to try to determine the exact location of the boundary between Salisbury and the town of Canaan, i.e., Falls Village (which until 1858 included what is now the town of North Canaan). My research showed that the original marker in the southeast corner of Salisbury was a pile of stones at the boundary with Sharon.

  This means that unlike Sharon-Cornwall, where the boundary is in the middle of the river, the border between Salisbury and Canaan and North Canaan is on the west bank. In other words, the iron bridge is entirely within the town of Canaan, i.e., Falls Village.  In the earlier rebuilding, Salisbury decided to be generous and bear half the cost, and I would hope that such an arrangement would also prevail this time.

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Two northwest Connecticut residents who died recently had special meaning for me. They were William J. Ash of Salisbury and John S. Zinsser of Cornwall.  They were very different men, but each made a distinctive mark.

Bill Ash was the executive of the New England Lime Co. in Canaan in charge of the magnesium plant that built the igniters for incendiary bombs used over Germany and Japan, and then furnished what became the triggers for the atom bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We may regret that the atom bomb appeared to be necessary, but that was an historical fact and someone had to do it.  

From all accounts Bill Ash and his 200 colleagues conducted their work extremely well, and it may just be that awareness of the horrors helped prevent any other resort to nuclear weapons over the last 63 years. Bill’s beloved wife, Jean-Ellen, later was an editor of The Lakeville Journal. They were married for an impressive 71 years.  I was privileged to interview Bill Ash for the Salisbury World War II history project shortly before his death.

John Zinsser was an elegant and artistic man of many talents who was prominent in the publishing world and took a great interest in opera as well as contemporary national politics (he wrote distinguished letters to the editor). We first encountered him in a course on opera he taught at the Taconic Learning Center some years ago, and we met frequently over dinner with him and his wife, Anne. The memorial service in Cornwall Saturday employing members of the large joint family in appropriate reminiscences and music, was one of the most unusual I have ever attended, and it was a highly appropriate tribute to a remarkable man.