Biden our time - will Joe make a gaffe?

The grandest season of all is upon us. Gorgeous colors are emerging and it looks as if the foliage will be just about at peak for Columbus Day weekend. How fortunate we are to share such bounty!

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After last week’s presidential debate which I thought Obama won on most significant points, there’s cause to feel a lot shakier about the Oct. 2 contest between Joseph Biden and Sarah Palin. On qualifications, Biden ought to prevail easily. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he has both knowledge and experience. Palin’s exposure to foreign affairs consists of being governor of Alaska, a state that borders both Canada and Russia, a country she has never visited.

But Biden also has a knack for mixing up facts, which he did last week in confusing actions taken or not taken during the Depression that started in 1929. He also has a reputation for not knowing when to stop talking, an affliction shared by a certain columnist I won’t mention. While Ms. Palin may be ignorant in some areas, and McCain acted with unforgivable impetuousness in choosing her as his running mate, she also is very smart.

On the broader questions of how the presidential teams compare, I thought some of the instant analyses after the debate last Friday reacted to style rather than meaning and ultimate impact. A knowledgeable friend points out that most of the early poll standings were compiled from questioning of persons who have listed telephones. But younger voters — those Obama has been making special efforts to win — communicate by cell phone. Their opinions have not been figured in most of the polls.

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The evocative recitation of letters between Harriet Gold and her family in 1825, read by Blair Brown and Sam Waterston to the Cornwall Historical Society on Sept. 21, deserves an additional bit of historical recall as a sequel. Harriet did indeed marry Elias Boudinot, the Cherokee lad who attended the Cornwall Mission School. The hubbub in Cornwall and Litchfield was such that the school was forced to close its doors forever. The young couple moved to Boudinot’s home in north
Georgia, where her parents visited them, making the arduous journey by horse and buggy. They found the young couple and their children content.

Boudinot became a respected figure in the civilized tribe, helping translate the Cherokee alphabet into English and then establishing a newspaper printed in both languages, the Cherokee Phoenix. After Harriet’s death, he fought against the move of the Cherokee tribe to Oklahoma, forced by President Andrew Jackson and Congress. At first Boudinot resisted the exodus, but finally, seeing no realistic alternative, wrote an editorial reluctantly accepting it. For that he was assassinated by a militant young Cherokee who opposed the move, thus becoming the first American martyr to freedom of the press a few years before that designation was bestowed on Elijah Parish Lovejoy in Alton, IL, for his editorials against slavery.

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A blurb on a local radio station referred to Canaan as being in the southern Berkshires. While that designation is widely used and understood, it is not geographically or geologically accurate.

Technically, the Berkshires are an extension of the Green Mountains of Vermont. Their Connecticut counterpart is the Litchfield Hills, the highest point of which is Bradford Peak on Canaan Mountain, 1,962 feet high. The Taconic Range is west of the Berkshires and runs along the New York-Connecticut, New York-Massachusetts and Connecticut-Massachusetts borders extending from Mt. Equinox, Vt., south to Bird Peak and Indian Mountain in Lakeville. Its highest peaks on the Mt. Riga plateau are the eroded remnants of mountains that once were higher than the Alps. The highest point in Connecticut is at 2,380 feet on the southern shoulder of Mt. Frissell (FriSELL), sometimes mispronounced “Mt. Frizzle.�

So let’s recapitulate. The Litchfield Hills are a southern extension of the Massachusets Berkshires and Vermont Green Mountains. The Taconic Range is west and hugs the New York border. In between is the marvelous Marble Valley that not only produces large quantities of limestone and lime, but also furnished  marble for the state capitol in Hartford, and also magnesium for World War II. The valley is a calcareous fen with many botanical wonders. There are more rare trees and plants in the towns of Salisbury, Conn., and Sheffield, Mass., than in all the rest of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined.

So there you have it, whatever the terminology. Great place.

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“Palin, like others in her town, accepted free gifts,� said a headline in the Waterbury Republican. A tautological redundancy that has become embedded in our language. What other kinds of gifts are there?