Not a Joiner

To many of you it will not be a surprise to learn that Henry David Thoreau, he of the Walden Pond Hermitage, was not only a naturalist but a fierce exponent of civil disobedience, in the traditions of Gandhi, King, and the Tea Party. And, to most of us, Thoreau shares a naturalist’s kinship with Henry Beston, John Muir, Mary Austin, Verlyn Klinkenborg, or maybe Audubon or even Teddy Roosevelt. But really, he traveled a fiercer, more anarchical path all his own.

It’s not that the one devotion contests or supersedes the other, what is interesting is the way the two were united in the man, along with his fervent embrace of abolition and transcendentalism. “Walden, or Life in the Woods” was published in 1854, eight years before Thoreau’s death and about 10 years after his solitary two years at the pond. It is his story of living alone and intimately engaged with unmolested nature as it surrounded him. Although he might have been remembered as a pencil maker, a transcendentalist, or a philosopher, that book marked the man.

And to be marked that way can be a problem, not only for historical figures with trailblazing legacies, but for any of us. Don’t pigeonhole me man, we cry.

John Updike, who avoided the novelist’s pigeon hole that had his name on it by writing penetrating and surpassingly graceful essays about books, art, artists, politics, golf, eczema, and and poetry besides, considered Thoreau and his masterwork sympathetically, though obliquely.

“A century and a half after its publication,” Updike wrote, “Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil disobedience mindset, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book risks being as revered and unread as the Bible.”

Thoreau was inspired to his take on civil disobedience by a tax collector who knocked on the door of his shack at Walden Pond. The collector, just doing his duty, wanted Thoreau to pay his delinquent poll tax.

The intrusion and the demand put Thoreau’s hackles up: “But in this case,” he wrote, “the state has provided no way [to redress the wrong against him]; it’s very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body. I have paid no poll tax for six years. I was put into jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up.”

He saw no sense in petitioning the government to see things his way and leave him alone, Unjust laws, Thoreau thought, survived patient lobbying far too long. Better to “transgress them at once,” but civilly.

What Thoreau reveals is in astonishing contrast to the modern impulse toward mass civil disobedience, typically framed as a movement to change the world, or to save the planet, and to do it collectively armed with Facebook and Twitter. Rather, his motives and objectives were unique to him.

“As for adopting the ways which the state has provided for remedying the evil … they take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone,” Thoreau wrote, “I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong.”

Gandhi wrote that this essay of Thoreau’s, the Duty of Civil Disobedience, was his bedside book. “We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another,” Thoreau wrote.

Not a joiner, he looked for space to do not everything, but something.

 

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They Weren’t “Nor’easters” – That’s Not Something We Say

I don’t mean to make this a big thing. To me it’s pesky, a bugaboo. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. Maybe you have an aged father who says dungarees when he’s talking about jeans, and you correct him repeatedly, but he doesn’t wise up.  Or, he calls cars automobiles and tells you again and again that his grandmother – God rest her soul – calls them machines, as in “Did you bring your machine today?”

This is the same thing. We have had two northeast gales in a week, and a third is on the way. All we hear from TV reporters or read in newspapers is nor’easter. Nor’easter coming, nor’easter caused flooding, battered New England awaits a third nor’easter.

I have tried to correct this nonsense before. In a column I wrote in 2009,  I reported that I had been taken to task by none other than Everett Poole of Menemsha.

“You blew it again, Cabral. There is no such contraction as ‘Nor’easter.’ The correct contraction for northeast is ‘no’theast.’ Nor’ is used only when proceeding west as in ‘nor’west.’”

The author of this love note was Everett Poole, fish impresario, former Chilmark selectman, and current Chilmark town moderator, who in many immoderate moments over the years has jumped with both hip boots on something he’s found in my newspaper, the Martha’s Vineyard Times. and especially on something I had written. Every time I put finger to keyboard, I knew that Everett, pipe fixed between his teeth, long-billed swordfishing cap perched firmly on his gleaming head, would examine the result, ready to gaff me. I’m out of that business now, thank goodness.

But, on the occasion I’m remembering he had  overplayed his hand. He had played right into mine. He had taken the bait. Finally, I was the one with the gaff.

Everett referred to a front page headline in the print edition of the newspaper, “Persistent nor’easter claims victim.” The headline accompanied a news story and front page photograph of a sailboat thrown up on the beach in Vineyard Haven. I often wrote headlines in those day, but I didn’t write that one. I had written “Persistent easterly claims victim,” but in the late stages of production someone substituted “nor’easter” for “easterly.”

When I saw “nor’easter” the next morning in print, there wasn’t anything to be done about it. When I saw it on the website, I had it changed to “no’theaster.” Everett is an ink on paper sort of fellow so he didn’t see the change on the website. He figured he’d drag me gasping over the rail, club me, and shove me in the fish hold. Instead, he had to face the fact – and this was hard for him – that we agreed on something.

Indeed, wrong as he was to abuse me the way he did, Everett was right, well, almost right. There is no such contraction as “nor’easter.” Or to be precise, there is one that’s often used, but it’s not authentic, not in any sense of the word. It’s pretentious, a silly affectation. It’s a pronunciation whose users pretend to an unearned saltiness. It’s falderal that’s caught on.

To force a change in this settled “nor’easter” nonsense the right minded will have to fight stiff headwinds and a roaring head tide. Even as I type this, Microsoft Word says okay to “nor’easter” and underlines “no’theaster” in red. As historically, linguistically, and aurally baseless as “nor’easter” is it’s common among dilettantish New Englanders, writers, journalists, and poets, and it’s accepted in dictionaries. “No’theaster” isn’t in the dictionary.

It’s a non-word that no genuine New England salt ever uses.  It’s like Manhattan clam chowder, not chowder at all. It’s like asking for scallops (sounds like gallops) when you want scallops (sounds like polyps). It’s like sailing up-east. It’s like me saying whuddup to my sons. It’s like saying hookup when you mean, well, falling in love.

And, although for me, the opinion of one crusty old salt is all the etymological authority necessary to pronounce “nor’easter” out and “no’theaster” in, I can refer you to people who study words and agree. For instance, Mark Liberman, trustee professor of phonetics in the department of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania, writing in the Language Log, on January 25, 2004 entitled his commentary “Nor’easter considered fake.”

Professor Liberman cites Jan Freeman, in the December 21, 2003 The Word column in the Boston Globe.

Professor Lieberman writes, “Jan Freeman cites an interesting alleged mispronunciation: ‘nor’easter’ … The Globe doesn’t (wittingly) use nor’easter for a disturbance blowing from the northeast, but in other newspapers, and especially among TV weather people, it’s common. How, asked reader Bill La Pointe, did this “bogus term” gain acceptance? It’s not, after all, a regional pronunciation, as many journalists outside New England now believe. ‘I grew up on Cape Cod when there still existed a pronounced local accent,’ wrote George Hand. ‘The word – spelled phonetically – was nawtheastah.’ Sailors disclaim it too. They may say sou’wester, but never nor’easter.”

Really, just take a moment to think about it. What’s the letter that Bostonians and New Englanders are notorious for forgetting in their speech. It’s “r.” They drop their “r’s.” They don’t drop the “th.” And, the “er” sounds like “ah.” So, it’s no’theastah, if you actually want to be authentic.

“The facts, however,” Professor Lieberman continues, “have not slowed the advance of nor’easter: Even in print, where it’s probably less common than in speech, it has practically routed northeaster in the past quarter-century or so. From 1975 to 1980, journalists used the nor’easter spelling only once in five mentions of such storms: in the past year, more than 80 percent of northeasters were spelled nor’easter. It’s no more authentic than “nucular” for nuclear or “bicep” for biceps, but it would take a mighty wind, at this point, to blow nor’easter back into oblivion.”

The professor went on to report that the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) cites examples of the use of the bastard contraction from 1837 onwards. But, he does not relinquish his position. He explains that the references are from British, Scottish, Canadian, and Carolinian sources and, naturally enough, they don’t carry water in New England.

“Subject to correction,” he concludes, “the picture that seems to be emerging is that nor’easter is a literary affectation.”

(This was adapted from a column I wrote and published in the Martha’s Vineyard Times in July of 2009. DAC)

A Nifty Bit of Salvage Work, and Some History

Except for the hard north-northeasterly wind, the gray skies, the spitting rain, the submerged dock, and the four yachts driven ashore along the beach, it might have been a July Saturday at Owen Park. There was a crowd, cars squeezed into every parking space up the hill almost to Main Street. Folks gathered in small groups, walked along the beach, and their dogs ran back and forth, exulting in the wind and the commotion.

A doozy of a storm had done a lot of damage alongshore and inland, and it had not blown itself out on March 3, but the day’s higher than normal high tide was due sometime before noon, and the effort to refloat at least some of the stranded sailboats needed to happen.

Fortunately, the ingredients needed to do the work had assembled themselves, as they had many times over decades. Word got around, and help showed up.

Bob Douglas was there of course, because McNab, his wife Charlene’s handsome sloop, nearly 50 feet long, had parted her newfangled and inferior mooring, which was not up to its job. Captain Douglas called it a “rubber band mooring,” and his description got around. Many of those gathered at the beach might qualify as disciples of the captain’s long and influential career as a marine historian and wooden boat enthusiast. His 1964 topsail schooner Shenandoah, along with his evangelical devotion to wooden boats and the history of American sail, had its way with a cast of young men and women, many of whom sailed with him and then sailed their own wooden schooners, ketches, and sloops.

Ralph Packer was there because he loves boats and Vineyard Haven Harbor, and because whenever marine crackups occur, his tugs fire up to help with the difficult work of salvage. He remembers 1967, also March I think, when Shenandoah went ashore in a northeaster at the bend in Beach Road behind the service station. Ralph’s tiny tiger, the 28-foot tug Ursa, pulled on her for hours before she came off the beach.

Saturday it was Ralph’s tug Sirius, 65 feet, usually towing fuel barges or deck barges loaded with gravel for Island road building, or modular houses for Island residents, that got two of the stricken sailboats off the sand.

With the wind blowing 30, with gusts higher, Sirius’ crew did a brilliant job. Captain Paul Bangs first hauled Heart’s Desire, a schooner owned by Matt Hobart and his family of Vineyard Haven, from the beach across the harbor near the Tisbury Wharf Co. Matt is a master boatbuilder at Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway. Several of the G&B work crew joined in the salvage efforts. Captain Bangs drew Heart’s Desire off the beach, towed her to a safe anchorage, then gently put his tug alongside the little schooner to retrieve her crew, a delicate bit of work in a small gale for such a large, heavy, powerful, but not so nimble towboat. Captain Bangs left not a scratch behind.

Next, Captain Bangs threaded the big tug through the mooring field behind the Vineyard Haven Harbor breakwater to help McNab. The crowd on the shore included sightseers, but it also included a collection of experienced marine operators. Of course, the core brain trust was Captain Douglas, Ralph Packer, and Captain Bangs, but there was a lot of advice available to them: Bill Mabee, a former Shenandoah mate, who made a career sailing tankers and freighters. Fred Murphy, owner of the Vineyard Haven schooner Ishmael, also a merchant seaman, was at hand. There was Rez Williams, the painter who sailed his small boat to New Bedford to sketch that harbor’s offshore fishing vessels, which became the subjects of his bold, much admired pictures. And David Dandridge, retired Steamship Authority master, answered the unspoken summons.

Among the G&B crew was Lyle Zell, son of Ross Gannon. Ross built many of G&B’s wooden boats, as his son does now. Many of these were designed by Ross’s partner Nat Benjamin, who sailed into Vineyard Haven from the Mediterranean one day with his wife Pam and their two girls, and decided to stay. His designs, all in wood, including his own schooner Charlotte, which rode out the storm without a problem, populate the mooring field behind the Vineyard Haven breakwater. The wooden sailboat line from Captain Douglas has not been exhausted.

The Owen Park dock was under water. Only the tops of the pilings were visible. Captain Bangs lay Sirius alongside what was the east face of the flooded dock. His plan was a clever one. It evaded the problem, with the wind blowing as hard as it was, of lining up and maintaining Sirius in position to tow McNab off, and guarded against the powerful tug’s damaging the yacht by pulling mightily and perhaps unsteadily on cleats or other of the yacht’s deck structures that might not hold. Captain Bangs chose to use Sirius’s capstan. That allowed slow, steady, smooth pressure to be brought to bear. A line had already been run between McNab’s stern and the Owen Park dock to hold her up to the wind. Three of the crew of helpers got in a skiff and floated hand-over-hand along the line to McNab. They took the towline from Sirius with them, and fastened it to a bridle they fashioned and dropped over McNab’s stern. Sirius’s capstan began turning. The tide rose the last bit it had to give, and slowly the yacht freed herself. It was a nifty morning’s bit of salvage work.

There are several ways to look at all this. It was a dramatic morning for the casual spectator, better than if you were watching the TV news while some idiot staggered in the rain and wind with a microphone in his hand, imagining that he was delivering critical, life-saving information. If you were a tug captain, a salvage crew member, the owner of the stricken yacht, it was a meaningful, even heart-stopping event. If you were one of the bunch that has been here for a long time, been touched by the light Captain Douglas lit, or by the generous devotion Ralph Packer has for the waterfront and its devotees, it was another moment when the history you had been part of reminded you of its enduring authority.

Two vessels, Witch of Endor, a black ketch that charters out of Vineyard Haven in the summer, and Rachel Saunders, a wooden sloop that G&B has done a lot of work on, remained on the beach when the day ended. Witch had the worst luck, hurled against the pilings at the north side of the Steamship Authority wharf. Rachel Saunders rested in the sand, not badly beaten up. She was refloated before the next gale arrived on Wednesday.

First published by The Martha’s Vineyard Times, March 7, 2018.