Snow shoveling and civilization

We woke up Friday to more than a foot of heavy wet snow. All the schools were closed, but your federal government was open as usual. The first snowplow roared by at about 4:30 am. It was just getting light as I contemplated when to start shoveling out our car. There was a knock. “Do you need help getting out?” It was Anthony our next door neighbor with his large snow shovel. I thanked him, and said I didn't need to rush since I had no hearings. He should do his own driveway and we would work on ours. By the time we got outside Anthony had already cleared a space behind our car. I could hear the scrape of his shovel as he worked next door, piling the heavy stuff six feet high. All around we heard neighbors starting snowblowers. Cliff our neighbor from three houses up the street finished his driveway and slowly advanced down the sidewalk with his snowblower. He continued past our house, then turned back, nicely clearing the walks in front of five houses, including ours. Shortly we showered and headed downtown, a bit later than usual, exhilarated.

Before the industrial revolution I suspect snow was moved with a variety of implements. Merry remembers using a big wooden snow scoop to push snow when she lived in rural Vermont. See, http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1914&dat=20000222&id=Nc0gAAAAIBAJ&sjid=p2oFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3257,3733551  I'm sure coal and grain shovels were also used to move snow. Most of the time farmers just stamped a path to the barn and let it go at that.

As cities grew in the snowy Northeast during the nineteenth century people wanted to make roads passable in winter. Horse drawn sleighs with runners were generally used, so rather than removing snow it was packed down in place. To combat heavy snowdrifts, big horse drawn snow rollers were used. In Brattleboro, Vt the DPW used a snow roller until the late 1920s.

The first patents for horse drawn snow plows were issued in the 1840s, but the first recorded municipal use of a horse drawn snow plow is from Milwaukee in 1862. As intercity steam train travel increased locomotives were outfitted with snow plows to clear the rails. Salt was used in a few cities, but was strongly protested because it ruined the streets for sleighing and damaged the shoes and clothing of pedestrians. The invention of the snow plow initiated widespread snow removal efforts in cities and created a basis for municipal responsibility in snow removal. Once automobiles became common, snow plowing became an essential government service.

Plowing created problems. It blocked the side streets and sidewalks with mounds of compacted snow. Merchants and pedestrians complained. Sleigh drivers also found fault with the plowing system because of the ruts and uneven surfaces it created. In response some progressive cities like New York hired horse-drawn carts and shovelers to work in conjunction with the plows, hauling away the plowed snow and dumping it into rivers. This not only cleared the mounds of snow, but provided thousands of temporary jobs throughout the winter season. For more of this history see “Have Snow Shovel, Will Travel” at http://nsidc.org/snow/shovel.html.

Special purpose snow shovels came into existence in the 1870s. The year after the great blizzard of 1888 Lydia Fairweather received the first patent for the prototype of the modern snow shovel that both scraped and scooped snow. The first plastic version was patented in 1939. Snow in America, Bernard Mergen, (Smithsonian,1997).

In our Strathmore neighborhood most homeowners quickly clear the sidewalks as well as the driveways after a snow storm. It's a matter of pride as well as public safety. It's a recognition that everyone uses the sidewalks. As I walk Joli I feel a distinct displeasure with my neighbors who only plow their driveways, but neglect their sidewalk. I have to assume they don't care if I slip or stumble. And what about the mail carrier?

This implicit recognition that other people are affected by the consequences of your personal choices is at the heart of civilization. When individuals take simple actions like shoveling their walk or refraining from littering it benefits the whole and makes our city a better place to live. Snow shoveling is not the most important part of living in a civilized world, but it's tangible evidence that most people care.

Birder?

I'm pretty sure I'm not a true birder. I can understand how a casual observer might mistake me for one, so I'd like to set the record straight. I do know a lot about birds. I can reliably identify the common birds by sight and song. I know the difference between a house sparrow and a tree sparrow. I am good at spotting birds in the woods. I recognize most hawks and owls by their profile in flight. I own more than a dozen bird books and guides.

Even so, my interest and knowledge pales compared to a true birder.

I'm pretty sure all birdwatching starts with a backyard bird feeder. We have half a dozen. Merry makes regular trips to Wildbirds Unlimited to keep them filled. We both greatly enjoy the close range bird watching our feeders provide. I've been interested in bird behavior for a long time now. Way back when I was twelve years old I earned a Boy Scout bird identification merit badge. As I recall, I needed to identify 50 birds by sight and sound to earn it. Now, nearly 50 years later, I know a lot more birds.

Even so, I'm not in the same league with true birders.

True birders have a depth of knowledge and interest I admire, but do not aspire to match. Nor do I own or feel the need to use any optics in my bird observations. True birders go out in the field with at least one good pair of binoculars, a spotting scope with tripod, and a camera with a powerful zoom lens.

It's generally not possible to identify birders by their plumage. When not dressed for the field they blend into the ordinary mass of humanity. Only when the topic of conversation turns to birds do their true colors emerge. For example, last Friday we were having dinner with friends in Saranac Lake, two of whom, Cris and Ron, we just met. The conversation drifted to birds commonly seen in the Adirondacks in winter. Ron remarked that it is generally easier to see and hear owls in the winter. He said he heard one just last night, then imitated the call,

Wo … Wo … Wo … Wo.

His careful timing, intonation, and volume led Merry to opine he had likely heard a Saw-whet Owl, a small bird often heard but seldom seen. Ron and his wife Cris agreed that was probably the bird. There followed an increasingly detailed discussion of owl calls. We learned that Ron has recordings of owl calls and uses them to attract owls into view. He told us that all birds have a wide repertory of calls, not just the most common ones people tend to recognize. He told us about sitting around a campfire a previous summer night when his family was startled by a loud call of what had to be a mountain lion, followed by the familiar loud Wo, Wo, Wo, Woooo of a Barred Owl.

By this point in the conversation I felt sure that Ron and Cris are true birders. They then casually mentioned their life lists. In their opinions just hearing a bird, like the rare Bicknell's Thrush that can sometimes be seen at the top of NY's highest mountains, is not enough. For them it is necessary to personally see, hear and positively identify a bird to add it to a life list. It didn't surprise me that Ron and Cris intend to spend a month in Central America on a birding expedition later this winter. No doubt about it, they are the real thing.

Good estimates of the number of birders are hard to come by, but I think it's safe to say the numbers are quite large. Membership in the 500+ chapters of the National Audubon Society is in the hundreds of thousands. A survey in the 1980s found 11% of North Americans occupied themselves by watching birds at least 20 days of the year. Another guesstimate in the late 1980s claimed there were 61 million birders. In its first two years of publication the expensive new Sibley Guide to Birds sold 500,000 copies. You have to be pretty serious to have bought a Sibley and yes, we have one.

Only some of this very large cohort qualify as true birders by my definition. For me perhaps the key characteristic of a true birder is the “Life List.” I know a lot of birds, but I don't know or care how many. A true birder keeps a careful life list and seeks to add new birds whenever possible. There are about 10,000 distinct species of birds worldwide. Only a small number of people have seen and identified more than 7,000. In England a truly obsessed birder is called a “twitcher.” Apparently this term originated in the 1950s as a sort of tribute to the nervous behavior of Howard Medhurst, a British birdwatcher of the time who would travel long distances, often on short notice, to see a rare bird.

Birds animate the natural world. I've learned a lot about being aware of my surroundings from the serious birders I've encountered in my travels. They enjoy sharing what they know and bring a learned amateur's enthusiasm to any discussion of the outdoors. Next time you see someone with a spotting scope, stop and ask them what they see.

Ice

Alan and I crunch across the patches of ice in the town parking lot on a clear, cold Friday night. We are headed for an opening at the Adirondack Artists' Guild in Saranac Lake. http://www.adirondackartistsguild.com/ We join about two dozen others milling about the small gallery, drinks in hand. The theme of the show is “Carnival!” About 15 quite good pieces on this theme line the walls at the rear of the gallery: paintings, collage, weaving, soft sculpture. I wander among the paintings and photographs. Almost all of them feature winter scenes. A tall older woman sweeps in with her little black & white papillon dog. She's got big blond-grey hair topped by an enormous fox fur hat. Her legs are encased in shiny black leather jeans. Everyone knows her. I assume she's one of the artists and move toward her. She sees me admiring her little dog. “That's Max. He's a critic.” As we walk back to the car Alan explains I have just met Ursala Trudeau, step-mother of Gary Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury.

We traveled north to Saranac Lake to visit our friends Alan and Susan and to enjoy the 113th Winter Carnival. http://www.saranaclakewintercarnival.com/ Part small town celebration, part Mardi Gras and part college reunion, it's not really a tourist event. It is an amazing snap-shot of Adirondack life.

It takes about two weeks for volunteers to build the ice palace along the bank of Lake Flower. Twelve- inch thick blocks are cut out of Pontiac Bay using a homemade rig that marries a gas motor to a big buzz saw blade. The blocks are hauled to shore and artistically stacked two stories high. Some blocks are hollowed out with colored lights installed inside for nighttime viewing. A maze of ice walls dead end at a crawl hole through the center of the back wall. Kids and adults, too, emerge one by one from the tunnel into a giant room with high crenelated walls. Because this year's theme is “Adirondack Cowboy,” a giant ice stagecoach is parked next door.

Saturday dawns clear and cold. A little before noon we park in our friend's driveway at the edge of town. Two women are putting the final touches on a four-wheeler they are transforming into a covered wagon carrying two piglets and six chickens. As we head downtown on foot we see a lot of folks with straw cowboy hats crammed down over stocking caps. The sky turns grey as the temperatures climb into the high teens. Across from the reviewing stand, a bar with an upstairs balcony and deck is overflowing with a rowdy crowd. The two main downtown streets are now lined four deep. I get the distinct feeling that almost everyone knows everyone else at least by sight.

Here come the cop cars, lights flashing. A military color guard in fatigues gets a hand as they grimly step along. A big truck from Duso's Marina follows. Its snow plow has a cow skull dangling in the middle. Mr. Duso was to be the Grand Marshall of this year's parade. He chaired this event for 24 years and was the local fire chief for 12 years. He died earlier this winter at age 78. His volunteer firefighter's coat hangs on the back of his truck. The big ice saw he designed and used to cut more than 100,000 blocks over the years to build every ice palace since 1955 is towed behind.

The local high school band marches gamely along. The kids wear their uniforms but whatever gloves, hats and boots they want. Some go with the cowboy theme, some are more practical. Then come the floats. All are home made, towed behind big construction trucks or heavy duty pick-up trucks with snow plows freshly repainted for the parade. Every local institution has a big contingent. The hospital, the nursing home, the Trudeau Cell Science Institute, every elementary school, Paul Smith's College, two groups of Shriners, Planned Parenthood and the ladies auxiliary of the VFW all have modest floats. Some loosely organized young environmentalists calling themselves the Green Circle dance and drum down the street to celebrate local farming. A bag pipe band in kilts has traveled down from Ontario. A small troupe a civil war reenactors thrill the crowd by firing their muskets every block. The ten members of Society for Creative Anachronism buck the theme in their Viking outfits. Another group dress in costumes inspired by early video games such as Pong and Super Mario. A large bunch of men with beards (and some women with fake beards) march as the Brothers of the Bush.

My feet are freezing. On and on it goes for nearly two hours. Four day-glow Rasta clowns perform with snare drums. A small group of brass players and a bass guitar playing through a megaphone is channelling the Blues Brothers. Everyone is waiting for the parade favorites: The Adirondack Lawn Chair Ladies.

Finally here they come, nearly fifty women of all ages dressed in jeans, cowboy hats and identical vests. Each one carries an aluminum lawn chair covered in a brown and white cow design and their names written in glitter. Line dancing music starts. They swing the chairs overhead in perfect time. They open and snap them shut as they dance and strut. No one misses a beat. The crowd goes wild.

We stamp life back into our feet as we head to the car. Back at Susan and Alan's we fire up the sauna. As I start to warm up at last a silly ditty I heard for the first time today by a fellow called Speedy Arnold is stuck in my head:

It's cold here in Saranac Lake.

My thermometer says, “Give me a break.”

Makes you shiver and shake, makes your radiator break.

It's cold here in Saranac Lake, it's cold here in Saranac Lake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXm-R4hJ7_8

Utica Bosnians

Last Monday I headed down the Thruway to hear cases in Utica. Four of the five cases involved Bosnian refugees. If you have been following my blog, you might remember my reflections on conducting a hearing in Bosnian from a year ago. Those who missed that entry can find it here: http://edpitts.blogspot.com/2009/02/lost-in-translation.html


Bosnian is a musical slavic language that sounds like Russian to me. Last Monday SSA hired Vesna to help me communicate with the claimants. All four were represented by a non-attorney Christian clergyman who is working with the Utica Bosnian community and who speaks fluent Bosnian. Only one of the claimants spoke English, even though they all had been in the US for more than ten years. Vesna is a good translator and the hearings generally went smoothly, except when the representative got so deeply involved in questioning his client he forgot I needed to hear a translation.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, located on the Balkan peninsula, was part of the former Yugoslavia. The northern portion, Bosnia, is mountainous and wooded, while Herzegovina, to the south, is primarily flatland. The republic has a land area of 19,741 square miles [about the size of Vermont plus New Hampshire] and a population of 2.6 million, down from 4.3 million before the war of the 1990s.

The civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina raged from 1991 until 1995, but tensions remain despite a UN enforced cease fire. Ethnic tensions have simmered in the Balkans for hundreds of years. Today's Bosnians are descendants of Slavs who settled in the Balkans during the early Middle Ages. From 1463 until 1878 the Ottoman Turks ruled this area. I recommend anyone who wants to begin to understand the legacy of the Ottoman occupation read The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric. One of the most significant results of the long Ottoman rule is that a majority of ethnic Bosnians converted to Islam. Before the civil war 44% of the population were Bosnian Muslims, 31% were Eastern Orthodox Bosnian Serbs and 17% were Catholic Bosnian Croats. For an excellent article on Bosnian history see: http://www.everyculture.com/multi/A-Br/Bosnian-Americans.html


Wherever they settle in this country Bosnians have tended to establish self-sufficient communities and stay together. There are estimated to be well over a million Bosnians in the US with major centers of population in Queens, St. Louis, Cleveland and several other mid-sized cities. St. Louis has about 50,000 Bosnians. Utica has about 6,000. Syracuse has only about 3,000. About 43 percent of Utica's Bosnians are between the ages of 25 and 49, a much larger than average number of young adults. American Bosnians cannot return to their native land because the boundaries have changed and their homes are in a divided country. They're here to stay.

The driving force behind resettlement of Bosnians to Utica is the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. http://mvrcr.org/ Congress first included Bosnians in the US refugee allotment in 1993. That year the Refugee Center relocated 79 Bosnians to Utica. By 1997 the agency had resettled nearly 2,500 Bosnians.

Utica used to be a vibrant industrial city with a peak population of about 125,000 people, but in the late 1970's, tough economic times reduced the population by half. As the population dropped, hundreds of city homes were left vacant. Bosnians place a high value on owning their own homes. They have moved into Utica's dilapidated neighborhoods. The city estimates they have rehabbed about 500 houses, all of which are now back on the city's tax rolls. Hamilton College economics professor Paul Hagstrom says that after even with high initial resettlement costs, the city's investment in the Bosnian community is now starting to pay off in strictly economic terms.

Because of language difficulties and lack of vocational training, the majority of the Utica Bosnians work in low-paying, unskilled jobs. One of the city's largest employers, the medical products company CONMED, employs large numbers of Bosnians as does donut maker, Granny's Kitchens. Others work as construction laborers or LPNs in hospitals and nursing homes. If they get hurt or fall ill they quickly lose these entry-level jobs and are unable to find any other work. Then they apply for Social Security. Since they are fairly young, they are denied and their appeals come before me. Using SSA standards, based on their physical ailments alone, most would not be considered disabled.

All but one of the claimants last Monday alleged that in addition to their physical problems they are disabled by post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the events of their civil war. One had been held 6 months in a POW camp, then spent a year in a refugee camp. They told me stories of relatives killed, lands confiscated, and war wounds. All have been driven from their war-torn country. They have nightmares. They can't watch the news, but can't not watch it. They want to forget, but every time they talk to one of their countrymen they remember and they talk to fellow Bosnians every day.


I ponder their dilemma. I have great sympathy for what they have suffered and much admiration for what they have rebuilt. Depending on the evidence some will lose their cases, some will win. All have made me wonder at what human beings can and will do.