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Former Canaan resident trades the woods of the Northwest Corner for the grasslands of East Africa.
Jul 24, 2024
Daniel Peppe leads teams of researchers engaging in paleobotany to determine what the grasslands of Africa looked like millions of years ago.
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Dr. Daniel Peppe, a North Canaan Elementary School and Hotchkiss alum, is a professor of Geosciences at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
When he is not teaching both intro and graduate level courses, he can be found conducting research across the globe. In short, his work focuses on the evolutionary processes of plants and animals in response to climate change. Having conducted fieldwork in the U.S. Midwest, Australia and Abu Dhabi, Peppe has settled for Eastern Africa.
While in graduate school at Yale University, Peppe lived in the forests of Uganda with his wife, who at the time was researching chimpanzee behavior. It was there that he was put in contact with a geologist in Kenya who was looking for an extra set of hands at a fossil site.
Over the past 20 years, he has continued his work in East Africa, collaborating with both local and international geologists. Each trip lasts about a month and involves moving from site to site.
“The work I do is like building a puzzle, I have all these pieces that need to be put together,” Peppe said.
To build the puzzle of what the landscape looked like in Africa 15-20 million years ago, his team uses paleobotany and ecological methods. The “pieces of the puzzle” range from climate patterns to plant and animal communities. Once put together they provide the team with a reconstructed version of the ancient ecosystem. From there, Peppe can estimate how the ecosystem impacted the natural life that once inhabited it.
A recent focus of Peppe’s work has been on C4 plants, which refer to warm-season grasses.
With his team, he set out to answer the question “when did C4 plants evolve in Kenya and why?”
Unbeknownst to him, the data he would later find would completely shift the timeline of African geology. Peppe’s team found that these plants, which are imperative to interpreting the evolution of mammals, including humans, could be dated back 10 million years earlier than previously documented.
This finding then led to their second breakthrough. It was previously claimed that traits and characteristics of apes had developed through their reliance on dense forest as habitat.
However, coupled with the earlier dating of warm-season grasses, Peppe’s team was able to connect apes’ evolution to both types of vegetation.
Peppe’s passion for nature started long before his academic career. Growing up in the Northwest Corner “really had an impact,” he reflected. As a kid he worked his way from Cub Scout to Eagle Scout. His Eagle Scout project was making trail signs for the North Canaan Greenway.
Despite far flung adventures, Peppe still reveres the Northwest Corner. “I think a lot of people overthink where we live,” Peppe said. “It is full of interesting geology.”
When at Yale, his class went on a field trip to the Falls Village Falls, a place that he associated with childhood memories, not coursework, like fishing in the Blackberry River and hiking Mt. Riga.
“I love what I do,” Peppe said. “I get to be outdoors, working with people, discovering new things.”
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When I’m asked why the American Revolution was successful and the French Revolution, though larger and more complete, ended in the tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte, my answer is that prior to independence ours had Committees of Correspondence, uniting men of like minds (and often, of modest means) in many cities in discussion of the issues, while France’s revolution was a top-down affair controlled by a Paris-based elite. Democracy is not only at the core of our governance; it is what allowed us to become a nation in the first place.
Exactly two hundred and fifty years ago, in May, June, and July of 1774, our Committees of Correspondence, most formed only a year or two earlier, began to coalesce into what in September would become the First Continental Congress. The call for such a Congress had gone out a year earlier, from Boston firebrand Samuel Adams, but most colonists were not then ready for it. In the late colonial era, only a few such firebrands consistently called for resistance, among them Adams, Christopher Gadsden in Charleston, and Patrick Henry in Williamsburg.
Then, in late 1773 came the British attempt to force Americans to pay excessive duties on imported tea, and the Boston Tea Party to resist that, and, in reaction to the Tea Party, the British “Intolerable Acts,” described in my earlier column. However, in the wake of those Intolerable Acts, when colonial groups tried to organize a boycott of British goods and votes were taken on the matter in various cities, the result was still not uniformly pro-rebellion. Of New York’s public vote, upper-class resident Gouverneur Morris sniffed, “On my right hand were ranged all the people of property, with some poor few dependents” who were against the boycott, “and on the other all the tradesmen,” whom Morris thought of as “reptiles” come out for their moment in the sun. The boycott lost the vote in New York but it won elsewhere.
Because it had not won everywhere, Philadelphia’s Committee of Correspondence issued a call for all colonies to send representatives there for a congress whose delegates would “clearly state what we conceive as our rights and to make claim or petition of them to his Majesty, in firm, but decent and dutiful terms.”
That seemed such a good idea that every colony except Georgia began to prepare. This was not simple, as there were whole phalanxes of potential delegates for whom the date was inconvenient — the operators of small farms, for instance, would be in the midst of their annual harvest — and others who could not afford the time off from their businesses to attend. It was generally understood that the congress would be largely a rich men’s affair.
Boston’s Sam Adams was chosen to go, as was his cousin John. The Sons of Liberty, knowing how poor Sam was, decided that his appearance ought not to count against him or subject his ideas to ridicule, so they had a bespoke suit made for him, with gold knee buckles. British General Thomas Gage thought about arresting Sam in advance of the congress but decided against it, believing that to do so would spur a riot. Gage’s attempts to then bribe Adams were repulsed, and Sam requested that the general “no longer … insult the feelings of an exasperated people.”
Several colonists who would have liked to be at the congress could not go, among them Thomas Jefferson, who was ill, Bostonian Joseph Warren, who couldn’t afford it and was perhaps redundant with Sam Adams, and Pennsylvania lawyer John Dickinson. All three wrote documents that many others read and took to heart: Warren’s “Suffolk Resolves,” a rousing call to arms; Dickinson’s collection of “Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer,” and Jefferson’s latterly-famous “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” The writings made similar points that would be fundamental to the revolution: 1) that the colonies were of supreme economic importance to Great Britain and therefore ought to be accommodated; and 2) that the colonists were entitled to the very same rights enjoyed by British citizens in the homeland.
Next time: The First Continental Congress, and what it left undone.
Salisbury resident Tom Shachtman has written many books, including three about the Revolutionary Era.
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Town halls will be shut down during the early voting period.
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LAKEVILLE — The official date of the Connecticut District Primaries is Aug. 13, but voters can head to the polls starting Aug. 5 for early voting.
With most party nominees running uncontested in 2024, voters in the Northwest Corner will have just one race to be decided in the primary.
Republican voters will choose between two candidates to face U.S. Senator Chris Murphy in November. Beacon Falls First Selectman Gerry Smith and Manchester entrepreneur Matthew Corey will vie for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. An Independent party candidate, ex-Marine Robert Hyde, will also appear as a challenger to Murphy in November.
Incumbent nominees will face no opposition in the August primary. Senator Murphy (D-CT), U.S. Rep. Jahanna Hayes (D-5), State Senator Stephen Harding (R-30), State Senator Lisa Seminara (R-8) and State Rep. Maria Horn (D-64) have earned their parties’ nomination and will all appear on the ballot in November.
Challengers for the house 64th district and senate 30th are also uncontested in the primary. Come November, Republican Barbara Breor, longstanding Goshen Town Clerk, will face Horn for the 64th seat and Harding will be facing a challenge from Democrat Justin Potter, a political newcomer from Kent, for the 30th. Democratic candidate Paul Honig will challenge Seminara for her state senate seat in the 8th.
To vote in the primary voters must be affiliated with a political party. Unaffiliated voters have until Aug. 2 at noon to register. However, voters already affiliated with a political party may no longer change their party prior to the election.
This is the first year that early voting is available for Connecticut voters. The August district primary will have a seven-day early voting period running from Monday, Aug. 5 to Sunday, Aug. 11. Polling locations will be open on Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. On Tuesday and Thursday voting booths will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Unregistered voters still have time to register before the election. Voters wishing to register should see their local Registrar of Voters no later than noon on the business day before they would like to vote. For example, to be eligible to cast a ballot on Aug. 5 a voter must register by noon on Aug. 2.
Primary day is Tuesday, Aug. 13. Polls will be open that day from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. The deadline to register before the primary is Monday, Aug. 12 at noon.
Cornwall Registrar of Voters Jayne Ridgway told the Lakeville Journal that the early voting period has created some challenges for local election officials. “It’s the money,” Ridgway said. Cornwall received a $10,500 grant from the Connecticut government to help establish early voting earlier this year. “We spent all the money that was the state money and now we have to use the town money.”
Staffing could be an issue for some localities as well, though Ridgway said she’s fortunate to have enough interested people to serve as poll watchers through the seven day early voting period. “There are only 188 registered republicans,” Ridgway said.
“We’re fortunate to have people willing to work,” Ridgway said. “But generally, some other towns where there’s a more active workforce; they just can’t do it, so they have more trouble.”
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Lakeville Journal intern Simon Markow, left, receives the 2024 Bob Estabrook Award from Salisbury Rotary Club Tuesday, July 16. Managing Editor Riley Klein praised Markow’s dedication and hard work.
Photo by Jen Markow
SALISBURY — Salisbury Rotary Club’s Charitable Gifts Committee presented donations and scholarships to locals Tuesday, July 16.
Marking its 75th year as a club, the Rotarians made a dinner to celebrate the occasion. Steak, shrimp cakes, veggies and desserts were paired with splendid conversation between the community and club members.
Once plates were cleared, Rotary President Paul Ramunni, owner of the accordion museum in North Canaan, presented donation checks to each recipient.
Jane Lloyd Fund received $3,000; Extras After School and Summer Program, 21st Century Fund for HVRHS and Dial-A-Ride each received $1,000; Fishes and Loaves and Corner Food Pantry received $750; Boy Scouts of America received $250.
A scholarship check was given to Housatonic Valley Regional High School graduate Grace Riva. She will attend University of New England in the fall.
Rising HVRHS junior Simon Markow was chosen for the Bob Estabrook award, given to an intern at The Lakeville Journal each summer.
While accepting the award, Markow commented on his time at the Journal so far. “I’m learning a lot. It’s a really great experience.”
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