Sculpture for the Assabet River Rail Trail

 The sculpture proposal was approved by the Select Board on 3 December 2024 and funding of $760 approved by Maynard Cultural Council on 10 December 2024.

A group of Maynard residents is proposing to the Town of Maynard that sculptures be added to town land adjacent to the Assabet River Rail Trail. Of the other communities that ARRT passes through, Hudson has several wooden and metal sculptures and murals, Acton none, Maynard six painted posts (see below), Marlborough none. A proposal has been submitted to the Maynard Cultural Council for 2025 funding for one sculpture, so perhaps by this time next year there will be progress. 

When the 3.4 miles of Trail in Acton and Maynard were officially opened to users in August 2018, art had no part in the project. Thebudget had included some landscaping, meaning specifically the planting of hundreds of trees adjacent (but not TOO close) to the pavement. Subsequently a non-government organization - Trail of Flowers (www.trailofflowers.com) - was started in the fall of 2018 with the intent of beautifying the Trail via planting flowering bulbs, and pollinator-friendly flowering shrubs and trees adjacent to the Trail. As of the fall of 2024, TOF has raised and spent about $11,000 for plantings primarily in Acton and Maynard, with some daffodil and grape hyacinth bulbs planted in Marlborough, and intention to expand to Hudson in 2025.

Painted posts salvaged from the ArtSpace Pollinator
Meadow project and getting a fresh coat of varnish
before installation along ARRT north of Summer St.

In October 2023, the ArtSpace Honeybee Meadow project offered to donate six painted posts to the Town of Maynard for relocation along the Assabet River Rail Trail. The Honeybee Meadow had been created in 2016 on ArtSpace property with a combination of donor and state governemnt grant funding. Later renamed Pollinator Meadow in recognition that many insects other than just honeybees required flowering plants to provide nectar and pollen, the project was let go fallow after ArtSpace closed in 2020. Each post - six feet tall when installed with the bottom anchored in gravel and soil - includes a pollinator-informative plaque at the top. Users of the Rail Trail find the artwork and information to be pause-worthy. The same east side of the Rail Trail has been planted with Forsythia and pollinator-friendly Beauty Bushes chosen to obscure the view of Enterprise Rent-a-car and Emerald Acres. 

My idea for first-year sculpture

For this initial sculpture project, the idea is that the Maynard group would meet with metal shop students enrolled at the Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School to design a work that was within the students' capabilities. Maynard volunteers would then be responsible for pouring a concrete slab as an anchor for the sculpture. The Town of Maynard has liability insurance covering injuries that occur in town parks; the Rail Trail, being on town land, would also be covered. Of course, design and placement would need to assure that there would be no sharp edges too close to the pavcment of the Trail. One of the proposed ideas is of a combination of a bicyclist knocking down a pedestrian (sketch). While some are of the opinion that this is too foreboding, it would definitely be more memorable that just the bicycle/bicyclist.

Another modest idea would be a 'wheel' six feet tall, with the spokes being flat strips of metal with Maynard history facts laser cut into the metal. Examples: Amory Maynard 1804-1890; Woolen mill 1846-1950; Town of Maynard April 19, 1871; Lorenzo Maynard 1829-1904; Digital Equipment Company 1957-1998; Clock Tower built 1892; Electric trolley 1901-1923; Monster.com 1998-2014; and so on. This could also be done for Acton, Hudson and Marlborough. 

If the first year's proposal succeeds, the group is considering a much more ambitious sculpture plan for future years. All that would call for corporate and government donations, requests for proposals from established metalwork sculptors and professional installations. Thinking big!!!

DONATIONS FOR TRAIL OF FLOWERS

Tulips at Marble Farm site blooming spring 2024

If you have enjoyed use of the Assabet River Rail Trail and the flowering installations, please consider donating to Trail of Flowers. Funds are needed to continue to add plants in all communities bordering the Trail, including the daffodil display at the Marble Farm Historic Site  (across Route 27 from Christmas Motors, Maynard). In the fall of 2023, tulips were added inside the fence at the Marble Farm site with great success - an additional 125 bulbs will be added fall of 2024. Elsewhere along the Rail Trail volunteers will be planting 1,000 daffodil bulbs. The bulbs were purchased as a mix of early-, mid- and late season blooming so as to stretch the bloom period.

So, please, as individuals or families, donate $20 or more via PayPal to damark51@gmail.com or via Venmo to www.venmo.com/u/DavidAMark51. Businesses are asked to donate at least $100. Whether you donate or not, if you wish to be kept informed of TOF volunteer planting opportunities then send an email to damark51@gmail.com. Thank you.      

Maynard Hurricanes

 Much of this is a repeat of a 2017 column in the Beacon Villager (Maynard'd former newspaper)

With all the recent news about hurricanes Helene and Milton, what is the history of hurricanes hitting eastern Massachusetts? 

1938: Trees damaged in Glenwood Cemetery

1938: The practice of naming Atlantic hurricanes with women’s names did not begin until 1947; or retiring names of major storms after 1955, or having men’s names rather than only women’s starting in 1979. Thus, the storm of 1938 came be known as the Great New England Hurricane, also the Long Island Express. Mistakes in interpreting weather data had led to a prediction that this storm would dissipate to gale force before making landfall. Instead, on September 21, 1938, it reached Long Island with hurricane force winds and a significant storm surge. More than 600 people died – mostly in Rhode Island. The oldest residents of Maynard and Stow remember vast numbers of trees being blown down, blocking streets and damaging buildings.    

1954: A double-header! Hurricane Carol also crossed the east end of Long Island, reaching landfall as a Category 2 storm. In Boston, high winds destroyed the steeple of the Old North Church. Hurricane Edna crossed Cape Cod as a Category 2 storm just ten days after Carol had tracked a bit farther west. Locally, rainfall of 5 to 10 inches on ground already saturated by the passage of Carol flooded basements and rivers. Combined, the storms destroyed much of the peach and apple crops just weeks before harvest time.  

1955: Hurricane Diane waltzed ashore in the Carolinas, wandered across New Jersey and southern New York, before heading eastward across much of Massachusetts. By this time it was weak wind-wise, but very, very wet. Much of southern Massachusetts, from its border with New York to the ocean, experienced flooding. Half of Worcester was under water. Locally, an estimated 15 inches of rain fell in four days. The Assabet River crested at 8.93 feet, the highest it had been since 1927 and the highest since. (The flood of 2010 crested at 7.1 feet.) Main Street flooded, as did the first floor of the mill building closest to the river. No bridges were lost.   

1991: Hurricane Bob was an August event. It skirted the coast before making landfall at Newport, Rhode Island as a Category 2 hurricane. Forecasting was good, so Rhode Island and Connecticut were able to declare of emergency before the storm hit. The storm crossed eastern Massachusetts fast and relatively dry, so most of the damage was due to high winds and storm surge along the coast. Provincetown reported sustained winds exceeding 100 miles per hour. Locally, downed trees and minor damage to buildings. The name “Bob” was permanently retired, joining Diane, Edna and Carol as other New England hurricane names we will never hear again.

An explanation of ‘storm surge’: Coastal flooding can be severe during hurricanes (and also northeasters). The push of wind across long distances of water for prolonged periods of time not only generates large waves, but pushes water. When this reaches shore at times of high tide, the water can be five, ten, fifteen, even twenty feet above normal high tide. The greatest storm surges are always to the right of the eye of the hurricane. In fact, on the left side, as the hurricane comes ashore, the winds are blowing away from the coast, causing the opposite of a surge. With Milton coming ashore south of Tampa, water was blown out of Tampa Bay, lowering sea level by about five feet. The Galveston, Texas hurricane of 1900 pushed a storm surge of 8-12 feet across a city that was mostly less than 10 feet above sea level, flattening the city and resulting in a loss of an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 lives, making it the deadliest natural disaster to every strike the United States. See Wikipedia article "1900 Galveston hurricane."

Digital Equipment Corporation - a 41 Year Arc

On Saturday, January 4th, at 1:00, I will be presenting an in-person talk titled “All Things DEC” at the Maynard Public Library. This will be taped by Maynard High School's WAVM and later posted to the library's Youtube channel.

Founder and president Ken Olsen
multi-tasking while donating blood

The talk’s description will be the same as when I gave this lecture in 2021 as part of celebration of Maynard's 150th anniversary. The description at that time: “Digital Equipment Corporation (digital, DEC) had a glorious arc that started with some rented space in the mill complex in 1957, furnished with office furniture bought on credit from Gruber Bros. Furniture, then rising to make Maynard the 'Minicomputer capital of the world', as a multi-billion dollar company second only to IBM. Mark's talk, with many images from the archives of the Maynard Historical Society, will span the origin, rise, peak and decline of DEC. He will touch on the work experience of women at DEC, and the company's commitment to diversity training.” Registration (free) is at the Maynard Public Library website."

After ten years of NOT writing about DEC in my weekly history columns in the Beacon-Villager, I finally started a series of articles about DEC in November 2019, with an origin story. All this stretched to a last article in March 2020 about DEC’s approach to anti-discrimination and diversity training. In between, the columns (all posted at www.maynardlifeoutdoors.com) covered not just the rise, peak and fall, but also DEC’s faltering and flawed efforts to be in the personal computer business, and then the impact on Maynard once DEC was gone. DEC was headquartered in Maynard for 41 years, and at its peak employed thousands of people in Maynard (a fraction of the 100,000+ employed worldwide).

Clay model for a never-made stature intended to
honor DEC founder Ken Olsen (at Maynard library)

DEC’s demise was not unique. The myth is that DEC missed the advent of mini-computers because of president Ken Olsen’s blind spot, but in reality, there were multiple, major, corporate missteps. And not just at DEC. Just in the greater Boston area Data General, Wang Laboratories, Prime Computer, Lotus Development Corporation and Apollo Computer faded, and either folded or were acquired. This trend of short corporate lifespan actually continues today and extends beyond tech. An interesting report by Innosight [https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/] observed that the average lifespan of large companies has been declining for decades, either because they lose to the competition (Monster, Yahoo) or are acquired by larger companies (Monsanto, Aetna, Time-Warner). Locally, our example is Acacia Communications, headquartered in Maynard’s mill complex, which started in 2009 with about the same building space as did DEC back in 1957, expanded, expanded more, went public in 2016 with a valuation of several billion dollars – and then was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2021. As of 2024, Acacia continues to exist as a branded company within the Cisco family.

 For most of its history, Maynard has been a company town, in the sense that its survival and prosperity depended almost entirely on one company. From 1847 to 1950, that was wool industry, turning bales of fleece into cloth. A period of diversification began in 1953 when the empty mill complex was bought and repurposed as Maynard Industry Incorporated, with dozens of industry and office space tenants. DEC started renting space in 1957, expanded over the years, until buying the complex in 1974, reverting Maynard to a one-company town again. DEC closed operations in the mill complex in 1993, then the Parker Street complex and the corporate headquarters on Powdermill Road in the years following. At the mill complex, Wellesley Rosemont (Clock Tower Place; 1998-2015) reverted to the practice of multiple clients, which carried over to current-day, Mill & Main operations. Looking forward, the Town of Maynard hopes to sustain the idea of being a commercially diversified community rather than hitch its wagon to one star. But it would still be helpful if the mill complex was 100 percent rented.    

Heat deaths more than all other weather combined?

U.S. government data shows heat-related deaths per year are more than the combined deaths from cold, tornado, hurricane, other wind events, flood, drowning due to ocean rip currents and lightning. 

Furthermore, while heat-related deaths officially reported as averaging around 1,200 per year, indirect estimates put the number as exceeding 10,000 per year. The discrepancy exists because autopsy reports that state cause of death as heat-related are much lower than the spike in total deaths during the heat wave versus the average for the same time of year without hot weather. In Chicago, mid-July 1995 saw temperatures above 100 degrees for five days. During that period, more than 700 deaths above average occured, and hundreds more were hospitalized and survived. Details are explained at a Wikipedia article titled "1995 Chicago Heat Wave."See also the general article titled "Heat wave."

People at risk are the elderly, infants, indoor workers at facilities without air conditioning, outdoor workers, outdoor athletes and hikers, and the homeless. Dehydration increases risk. In addition, evidence supports that use of methamphetamine puts people at higher risk.

The other weather-related deaths are dying from cold, hurricane, tornado, wind (not hurricane or tornado), flood, lightning or rip currents near ocean shoreline caused by storm-generated waves. Each of these, except in extraordinary years, cause fewer than 100 deaths per year. Furthermore, deaths from these causes are not trending up or down, whereas since 2015 the number of heat-related deaths per year have more than doubled. 

On a larger scale, according to the World Health Organization, between 2000 and 2019 there were approximately 500,000 heat-related deaths each year, with close to 80% of that total from Asia and Europe. Lack of air conditioning - also lack of electricity - combined with longer periods of extreme temperatures and inadequate medical care for heat stroke, contribute to these deaths. 

Wildfire smoke

Another under-estimated contribuion to premature deaths is wildfire. In the U.S. deaths directly attributed to wildfire, as distinguished from building fires, numbers in the single digits or teens for most years, with spikes when people are unable to escape when a wildfire sweeps into a residential area. However, indirect causes of death that can be attributed to wildfire smoke is an entirely different story. For people with existing respiratory, cardiovasuclar, kidney and other diseases, are at increased premature death risk when exposed to wildfire smoke. Even suicide rates increase! As with heat-related deaths, smoke-related deaths are under diagnosed and under reported. A recent study published by researchers at Yale University estimated that wildfire smoke-related deaths are at 30,000 per year. As with heat-related deaths, the elderly, outdoor workers and people who cannot afford indoor air filtration machinery are at greater risk.  

After the hurricane is gone

The 2 October 2024 issue of Nature magazine (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07945-5) has an interesting article titled "Mortality caused by tropical cyclones in the United States." The key point is that for years (years!!) after a hurricane has passed through an area, there is a long-term increase in deaths above expected. The research tracked deaths following 501 hurricanes over the period 1930-2015. The report estimated that the average hurricane generated 7,000–11,000 excess deaths over a multi-year follow-up, which is far inexcess or the average of 24 immediate deaths reported in government statistics. These indirect deaths - from many causes - had the greatest effects on the very young, the elderly and the impoverished. Often the indirect causes include less access or ability to afford health care, resulting in increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and others (but not repiratory diseases, vehicle accidents or others). For the hurricane-targeted states stretching from Texas to Maryland and Deleware, indirect storm-attributed deaths put the death rates in those states at 5-10% above national average. Although not mentioned in this study, tornado damage may also cause a long-term increase in deaths.  

Wild Cucumber (Repeat)

 A version of this was first published in 2013 and very popular (tens of thousands of views)

Wild cucumber showing leaves, tendrils and flower spikes

Wild cucumber, also known as prickly cucumber or balsam apple, is a plant species native to North America but with the annoying habits of some invasive plants. It is a fast-growing annual vine propagated by seeds. This slender-stemmed vine can quickly blanket low plants or tendril its way 15-20 feet up trees.

During July and August the vines display white flowers, followed by the development of seed pods that superficially resemble a spiky cucumber approximately two inches in length. Once the seed pods mature they dry out and disperse from the bottom several large black seeds the size of pumpkin seeds. Wild cucumber dies with the first frosts of fall.

Wild cucumber pods open from the bottom and seeds fall

The Linnaean name, Echinocystis lobata, comes from Echino for spiny and cystis for bladder-like in appearance. Lobata refers to the shape of the leaves. Echinocystis is native to the central, eastern and northern states, up into Canada. It is not found in the southwest, but confusingly, there are distantly related plants in southern California that also go by the name wild cucumber.

The latter are in the family Marah, with several related species. These are all fast-growing vines with tendrils and seed pods that superficially resemble a spiky cucumber, but Marah are perennials not annuals, with each year's new growth sprouting from a huge tuberous root that can weigh more than 100 pounds.

In Maynard, summer of 2024, there is a patch of wild cucumber near where the Rail Trail is parallel to High Street (a dead end street behind Jimmie's gas station).  Also, there was a single known appearance of Bur cucumber - a related annual native species that is similar in vining to wild cucumber but instead of one large seed pod has clusters of small seed pods, each holding one seed.  

Winter leaves a mat of dead vines and dried pods

American species invasive elsewhere

Although native to North America, Echinocystis lobata is in fact an invasive species in Europe, where it was first introduced as an ornamental garden plant (always the same sad story). This serves as a reminder that not all invasive species move from the Old World (Europe, Asia and Africa) toward the New World (the Americas). Poison ivy plagues England and parts of mainland Europe because back in the 1600s people thought it was pretty!

And not all invasive species are plants. Some of the most damaging to have made the crossing from North America to Europe are grey squirrels, raccoons, mink, and lobster. The mammal introductions were deliberate - either as pets or an attempt to develop locally grown animals for the fur trade. American lobsters may have been escapees from seawater holding pens for the food trade or deliberate releases by people who bought live lobsters air-shipped to Europe, and then found themselves unwilling to immerse their purchases in boiling water. 

The American bullfrog is considered one of the world's worst invasive species in Europe and elsewhere. Introduced as a food source (bullfrog farms), these frogs escaped into the wild where they out-complete native frogs by laying massive numbers of eggs and eating just about every living thing they can fit into their mouths, including native frogs.