A Walk in the Village

Everyday I'm home I try take a walk of about 2.7 miles in the village.  It is the same route everyday, and I usually do the walk about the same time every morning so I may see some of the same people out and about.  They are mainly dog walkers.  On odd days I walk left out of the house and on even days head right out of the house. Walking this route takes me near the elementary school, high school and middle school, and one of the major village parks, not to mention walking near the weedy Yahara River and more weedy and algae encrusted Upper Mud Lake.  I see people, and events that are common place and others that are somewhat, let me say, unusual.  This blog is about a walk in the village and two situations of which I recently came across, one being almost as rare as seeing a lepus americanus in Wisconsin.

Larson House, McFarland

The first event I will describe was the day following my encounter that will be the second event I will describe.   On this walk I came across an older couple with backpacks slowly hiking the bike path. As  I was about to over take them (while  moving into the street to social distance), I asked what hike they were training for.  They will be doing another segment of the Appalachian Trail (AT) in the fall.  They have been doing segments over the past several years, and usually spend about two to three  weeks out east, and walk two to three days and take a day off.  The most they accomplished in one trip was 118 miles. I found this interesting because I had just completed reading Bill Bryson's book A Walk in the Woods and the prior night watched the movie of the same name (and based on the book) staring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.  We had about a ten or fifteen minute conversation regarding the AT and their adventures.  They prefer to walk in the spring, and this year were scheduled to do so, but Covid delayed their adventure.  Water is more abundant in the spring time.  In spring, you can carry less water, and hence less weight. They noted one fall where they were told there was no water for over 20 miles. After I got home, I was noting this to my wife.  I asked her when we will begin training for the AT, there was not a positive response.

Weed Cutting on the Yahara River

The rare event, in my mind was not my encounter with the backpackers, but what occurred the day before.  While on that daily morning walk, the day before encountering the backpackers, I came across a lone young boy, perhaps eight or so years of age, on a bike at about 8:30 am.  He was sitting on his bike at a street corner, and as I walked up the hill on the other side of the street, he said to me that he was lost.  I walked over to the side of the street he was on and asked where he lived, and he told me the name of the street.  I asked where he was going and he said my grandma's house and I asked where that was and he said the same street name on which he lived. The street on which he lived and where he headed is a cul-de-sac so it is not like it was long street. Well, I knew the general subdivision of the street he mentioned, but was not sure of what particular street in the subdivision it was.  The subdivision is almost all cul-de-sacs, and I really don't recall what cul-de-sac is where. Lacking a smartphone, I did the next best thing and called my wife, who from years of garage sale buying knows pretty much every street in the village. Good thing I had my phone because it is rare for me to have it with me on my walk.  As I hung up I was thinking of the best way for the boy to get home, and to me that was providing a route with the fewest turns.  He mentioned that if he got to the elementary school he would know where to go from there.  I gave him a route with the fewest turns, although perhaps longer than other routes.  The route would direct him to a street along the side of the school, and I provided direction to that ubiquitous cul-de-sac.  I trusted he knew right from left, but in case he did not, I also gave him landmarks.  The first turn was only a block away and could be seen from our vantage point and the second turn would take him on the opposite side of the street from the school.  Two more turns and he would be on his street.   As I continued my walk, and about 20 minutes later, I saw a lady with her young children who I know live in the same subdivision and asked if she had seen the boy, she had not. We figured being on a bike he made it home before she set out for her walk.

Red Dot Marks Location of Sighting of Rare Species in McFarland, WI
a lone in puer cursoriam
Source:  Google maps

What struck me as odd, beyond his answer to where he lived and where he was going,  was he was alone out fairly early in the morning (and without a bike helmet).  So I came across an oddity for the village: a  lone free-range young child in the village of McFarland on his bike and not in or near his subdivision. A particularly rare species in this suburban village.  To me it is so rare, that I have given this a name: in puer cursoriam. This geographic and demographic situation is not a common sight in the village, at least to my eyes, and is so rare that it strikes you as unusual.  This is a community that even buses some elementary school grade children who live a block or less from their school.  There is not a great deal of a lone child movement by biking or walking outside of their neighborhood without an adult. Nationally, and in particular, suburbs, have become overly protective of children that you wonder what type of independence they will build, and how this will affect future decision making.  I guess you could say it is helicopter parenting to the extreme. Is it any wonder why kids are said to be overweight? The lost boy was about 1.5 miles from the street that contained his destination.  Pre-Covid, the suburban residential streets would be quite empty during the day.  There have been times when I hardly saw any one out, but with Covid more people tend to be out walking there dogs, or getting exercise.  Many lone young children are in or near their neighborhood, not over a mile away.

Location of Sighting of in puer cursoriam

Although, as rare as this event is, this is not the only free range child that I saw in the village on that walk.  About 15 minutes after seeing him I saw two boys on bikes heading to the river to fish (this was evident due to the fact they were carrying fishing poles), the youngest perhaps a little older than the boy who was lost, and likely his older brother who was perhaps 11 or 12. I guessed it was an older brother by the directives he was issuing to the younger boy behind him, and the younger boys response (he did not appear to like the directives).  It was a rather startling to come across three, yes, three free-range children on my walk that day. yet, there was only the one case of a lone free range child. I did not see them the rest of the week, or this week, although I have seen the fisherboys before.

Two Free Range Boys, not as rare as a lone child,
 photo taken June 23, 2020, about a week after my
sighting of the rare species in puer cursoriam

Also on my walk this week some child exercise class is being held at a local park through which I walk.  They range from say kindergarten to perhaps grade five and are broken into two to four groups, depending upon what they are doing.  I think most must get dropped off, because I have not seen many bikes.  Maybe a couple bikes are parked.  The child gets dropped off to get exercise, is not unlike a person who takes an elevator to go down to the main floor and then goes to a gym to use a step machine for exercise.

Lewis Park looking at Lower Mud Lake

As a city planner I am well aware of the controversy of sidewalks as a safety enhancement for walking.  Every time we did a bike and pedestrian plan, sidewalks were the major issue.  I first approached the sidewalk issue in my first couple years of work in Fitchburg, and proposed a policy of placing sidewalks on collector and some other streets that connect parks. (The Capital Times had an article the day after I presented the sidewalk policy to the Plan Commission for discussion, with a head line that read "What's long grey and hard and coming to Fitchburg.")  It was one of the top five most contentious issues in that governmental unit, OK, perhaps the top two or three. It was amazing how people hated to have a sidewalk along their street.  Gradually, we went from no sidewalks to a sidewalk section in the drive for homes in new subdivisions, to at least make sidewalks easier to install, and then eventually in the early 1990's to requiring sidewalks in new subdivisions.  Many of the same people who did (or do) not want sidewalks along their street are among the many who complain about speeders on their street, but as past enforcement shows, the same persons who complain about speeders are ones who do their share of the speeding.  Layout and connectivity are important to an integrated transportation system and many suburban street layouts work against such a street pattern.

Bike Bridge connecting Pheasant Run with Creamery Rd in McFarland

Reasons for being outside vary.  The boys going fishing, the older couple training for the AT, and then there was the rarest of rare sightings in the village, a lone free-range child on his bike and well beyond his subdivision, and of course me taking in the sights of the village and walking as a means of exercise.   I suppose the boy on the bike being lost is why parents do not allow their children to free- range about, but then the children miss out on the key to geography:  A geographer is never lost, they are just exploring new territory.  The lost boy did not seem frightened, or scared, and I am sure I am not the only one who would have assisted the boy. Although, he perhaps is lucky we were in a time of Covid, because pre-Covid he may have been waiting a long time for someone to provide assistance, if I had not happened by. A walk in the village can produce the rarest of sights, and so it was last week.  Like my coming across an identifying a new endangered species: in puer cursoriam.

Unless otherwise noted, photos by author on 22 June 2020

A Not Too Distant Mirror

I think it was about forty years ago, while in college, that I read parts of historian Barbara Tuchman's work titled A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. It was probably for a research paper.  I cannot recall much of the detail of the book, but I do know that it covered various events of that century.  The 14th century, among other calamitous events saw: the Hundred Years War, a papal schism, and the great plague.  The mirror was a reference to the 20th century which, when the book was published in 1978, had seen various wars, including two world wars, the 1918 flu epidemic, the great depression, racial strife, equal rights, and other movements. Given that, I wonder what Barbara Tuchman would say today. We may be distant from the calamitous 14th century, but we are not too distant from those calamitous events of the 20th century.  We are less than 20% of the way through the 21st century, and it seems that we already have a century worth of calamitous events.

Tuchman's work, from what I recall, starts with a cooling period which followed what is often referred to as the  Medieval warm period.  Warmer weather, during the Medieval warm period, allowed for more marginal land to be tilled, which led to more crops to be grown and hence more population to be sustained.  Then came the cooling period, or climate change, which led to cold weather, floods and a resulting famine starting about 1314.  Depending upon account the famine would last from three to seven years.  By comparison, the 21st century has seen a changing climate, as much of the world the last ten years has been noticeably warmer, on average, than any of the prior three decades.  More significant rainfall and other weather factors affect populations.  Think of flooding in the Midwest and plain states just last year.  Similar flooding, but with colder temperatures occurred in the early part of the 14th century. 

Of course, the 14th century is best known for its greatest calamity the bubonic plague, better known as the Black Death.  Perhaps the 21st century will be defined by Covid-19.  The plague was spread primarily by rats to warriors and sailors, and who with the rats, carried it to ports and persons.  It then spread over all of Europe.  Covid began with a bat, and spread person to person and possibly by touching objects that may have been infected.  Think door handles and counters.  What is interesting is that much of the population of Europe was significantly affected by the plague. Estimates range from 30-50% of Europeans died of the plague. And to think it started when some Russians, the Tartars, decided to use the dead bodies of their comrades as projectiles against a Genoese army.  As these sailors returned to Italy and the plague sread to Italy and then to all of Europe.  Famine and the plague are very Malthusian-identified methods of population control.  According to Malthus, varied checks, of war, pestilence, floods and there after affects, such as starvation are a check to population growth. The 1918 flu epidemic had a much smaller death rate than the plague, but was still estimated at 3 to 5% of the population.  The Covid death rate is thought to be about .5 to 1%. 

Today, advances in agriculture and medicine have led to fewer impacts of drought, and disease than what was possible in the early 20th, much less in the 14th century.  In the 14th century doctors wore long beaks stuffed with herbs and essential oils, today health workers wear N95 masks, when available. However, our advances in a  global world come at a cost, think of the pests, that overrun North America as a result of globalization.  They destroy trees, plants and shrubs and some carry virulent diseases.  Then we also have the use of insecticides to battle bugs, and combined with the mono-culture of crops we see a significant decrease in pollinators. In medicine researchers see the mutation of bacteria into super bugs more resistant to the use of antibiotics.  The superbugs have come about due to the overuse of antibiotics.  Our ability to offset famine and disease comes at a cost.  Speaking of famine, East Africa has been suffering from a locust infestation that has ruined vegetation and crops, leading to a potentially devastating food situation.  Here in the U.S., at the same time, a big concern was the lack of beef in the meat aisle.  Covid closed a number of meat processing plants. Transfer of disease or pests has been with the world since the start of travel.

Of course, we have war.  For almost nineteen years the United States has been at war with Islamic fundamentalists who bombed the Twin towers, the Pentagon, and an aircraft taken down in the fields of Pennsylvania.  Filled with hubris yet again, the US spread the war to Iraq.  While, the 14th century had the 100 years war, the war on terror seems as if it will never end.  I have to think that 100 years in the 14th century is probably equal to about 10 years present time.  Activity and communications in the world move so much faster.  The twentieth century had a seemingly no-end to conflict.  The four year Great War was followed, less than a quarter century later, by an even larger world conflict. Five years after the end of WWII we had the police action of Korea followed later by the action in Vietnam.  Both of the latter arose in large part, according some historians, from the policies of FDR who desired to see American might replace British colonialism as the "peace" keeper of the world.  Of course, American hubris following WWII made the US think they were militarily invincible.  The Japanese thought the same in WWII, as the US did after.  However, Peter Bernstein (The Power of Gold) writes that unlike the 14th century, except for the two world wars, the major world powers were at peace during the 20th century.  He says the 14th century showed no such relief. As Bernstein writes, "The fourteenth century stands unmatched in history for its unrelenting sequence of famine, pestilence, social chaos, and warfare."  A terrible contrast to the advancements of the 12 and 13th centuries.  Bernstein may be correct, but the cold war produced a seemingly too large supply of nuclear weaponry.

The calamitous 14th century also saw revolts, one being the 1381 English peasant revolt.  In the US we now have protests and riots related to police use of force on persons of color, showing that the racial riots and civil rights programs of the 1960's did not fully effect change, and inherent bigotry is difficult to overcome.

Economically, while the 20th century had the Great Depression, the 21st century, so far, has had the Great Recession, and now the coming possible Covid recession.  However, an oddity occurred during the 14th century, particularly during the plague, when so many persons died, the wealth standard of the survivors increased.  Gold was the main standard at the time, as it has been throughout much of history, and as the population decreased the amount of gold saw an increase per-capita. Wealth then as today was not equally distributed.  Further, as today, who holds the money has the power.

The church had its papal schism in the 14th century, or two popes, (starting in 1378 and lasting into the 15th century), not to mention when a pope was imprisoned in the early part of the century.  This fact is almost lost to history, but this had marked effects on the Christian population of the middle ages.  The twentieth century saw church reform with Vatican II, but the 21st century saw a pope begin a reform of the reform, which led to more confusion for the decreasing numbers of faithful.  The pope who liked to look back to an earlier time resigned and promised to retreat into a life of prayer and contemplation, but he has had a tendency to come out with a statement or writings at critical junctures of decisions for the current pope.  Concerned with relativism, the reform adverse institution increasingly has allowed itself to become more and more irrelevant.

The calamitous 14th century followed two centuries of innovation and economic advancement.  The history of the middle ages is not dark, but produced advancements following the downfall of the Roman Empire.  Today, change moves much faster and this then leads to a theory I have that is built off of a psychologist and his talk about highs and lows in life.  The theory of the psychologist was the higher high a person experiences the lower his low, or depression.  In my theory something similar holds true for cultures and economies, the higher the highs, the greater the lows. Is it possible that the advances of the 12th and 13th helped produced the calamities of the 14th? That the industrial revolution led to the Great War, which in part led to WWII as Japan and Germany clambered for more natural resources? Is the digital revolution of today leaving too many behind? Coupled with the fact that time moves so much faster, change can come more rapidly. I guess that is something I need to further study.  Of course, the Industrial Revolution has led to acid rain, and the CO2 emissions is large factor in climate change.

In a sense what this post really shows is that no century is without its tumult and divisions, some centuries just have much more in terms of calamity, and in the 14th and today it all seems to begin with changes in weather.  We are far removed from the calamity of the 14th, but we are not as calamitous today as then, although we are only 20% through the 21st century.  We are all human, each with our own ideas, habits, and tendencies. Culturally, certain events have a tendency to cause long-lasting change, think of the 1960's, the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand, from which flowed alterations to the cultural and world landscape.  In some respects, as globalization has increased in the world, more conflict occurs, and interestingly tribalism and nationalism have advanced.  The advancement of tribalism, nationalism and individualism is what helps keep people or groups apart. Are these an inherent response to globalization?  While the world is in a series of calamitous events, we need to understand and respect the one common humanity and the earth on which we find ourselves.

Photos by author, May and June 2020

Infestation

Pests come from different sources and in different sizes and shapes.  The pest I wish to talk about today is an invasive specie that made its way from Asia to the United States.  The emerald ash borer (EAB) was first noticed in central Michigan in 2002 and likely came over as part of wood shipping crate by sea or air from northeast Asia, much of it being northeast China and part of Mongolia.  As a child I recall the street trees being taken down due to Dutch Elm disease, so we are in a situation that is now repeating itself, but with a different pest from a different part of the world.  With the EAB many cities, such as my current village, took trees down ahead of the anticipated infestation. The EAB was first noticed in Wisconsin, the southeastern part of the state, in August 2008.

Injection lines connected to the tree awaiting insecticide

Twelve years later, I have not seen an EAB, but have seen the holes and the damage they cause.  When I bought my house, the first tree I installed was a Autumn purple ash, a cultivar developed at the University of Wisconsin from the white ash.  For six years now I have been having the tree professionally treated, and treated at least twice before that myself.  At a certain size the professional service is required.  The tree is treated every two years.  It is not cheap, and the total cost of treating will likely soon pass the cost of removal of the tree, but the tree holds value beyond the cost of removal.  The house and yard would not look the same with it removed, and it would take years for a new tree to reach its relative size.  I am not sure if at some point the ash borer leaves because no more trees are around for it to infect, not unlike herd immunity of viruses.

Insecticide being pumped to tree

Ash is a good strong wood that is used to make baseball bats, and is native to the United States. It is unfortunate that a bug can come from beyond the ocean and infect the tree, costing forests, streets and parks the canopy that can be enjoyed and bring along the other many benefits trees provide. They have created elm trees resistant to the Dutch elm disease, and researchers are working on a disease resistant ash tree.   However, like people, trees can have a different genetic makeup and it appears that the genetics of some green ash trees resist the EAB.  At Penn State they are thinking those trees may hold the key to survival.  Whatever the case, if we think Covid has a high mortality rate, the mortality rate of ash trees near the epicenter of its arrival in Michigan is over 99%.

Line from source dividing to multiple lines to the tree

To avoid the death of my tree, since EAB is in Dane County, and some say in McFarland, it is now treated every two years. This year it was treated on Friday, May 29.  The caliper of my tree requires eight holes pounded near the base of the tree about 1/2" through the bark to the cambium layer.  A chemical is injected by a hookup of small hoses and valves.  A regular bicycle pump provides the pressure for the injection.  The amount used, like the holes is based on the diameter of the tree.  In my case, about 25 to 30% of the bottle is used. It takes about a half hour for the injection process.

Close up view

It is not cheap, but the issue is that trees provide a variety of benefits, and I have chosen to have the tree treated.  Globalization has brought many good things, but we also need to examine the invasive species and the cost to determine appropriate cost/benefits. Yet, now it is too late.  I have always liked ash trees and it is sad to now see them disappear from their native habitat.  Perhaps pest resistant trees will reestablish the woodlands with ash trees.

Hole upon completion of treatment