The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: massachusetts
The Salem Witch Trials Were Atrocious, Not Amusing

The Salem Witch Trials Were Atrocious, Not Amusing

Tourism in Salem is wild with 100,000 visitors descending on this historic Massachusetts town on any given day. Traffic is gridlocked, and there are virtually no parking spaces left. The mayor told visitors to go to satellite parking lots and take shuttle buses downtown. Then the satellite lots got maxed out.

Salem is famous for the 1692 witch trials, which has made "Halloween in Salem" a bucket list item. That's good for the Halloween-themed businesses, which have taken over downtown. Not so good for locals wanting to pick up groceries or do early voting at the City Hall Annex. And certainly not good for an understanding of the tragedy behind the merrymaking.

The Halloween festivities no longer limited to a day or a week, the "pointy hats" start showing up in early September. Joining them are characters dressed as goths, ghost hunters in top hats and tarot card readers.

The party scene is so good for business that Salem has branded itself as "Witch City." (The city's police car doors feature silhouettes of witches on broomsticks.)

Some local objections go beyond the inconvenience and kitsch overtaking this beautiful colonial-era city. They include the history being celebrated. It may be three centuries in the past, but the witch trials ended in a mass execution of innocents.

"I don't want to be an old curmudgeon," a Salem resident named Patrick told me, "but it seems like we have this horrific crime committed against the women on one hand and the Disney version of witchcraft on the other. The women weren't wearing those hats, I'm sure."

The Salem witch hunts ended in 24 executions, largely on charges of devil worship. Almost all involved women who died by hanging. But a male victim, an 81-year-old farmer named Giles Corey, was pressed to death after refusing to plead either way.

Nowadays, the town runs a month-long celebration called Haunted Happenings. The participants include costumed celebrants cruising the main pedestrian street. A few dress up as Hollywood witch characters offering to pose for photos, they hope, for money. Buses blaring music ply the streets.

There are Salemites who would like a rebranding around the city's fabulous Peabody Essex Museum and stunning colonial architecture. Also, the waterfront, which once served as the nation's biggest port, its tall ships venturing to and from all four corners.

But you can't escape Halloween, even at historically significant locations. The House of the Seven Gables is the real thing, a fine structure built in 1668. But as the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's gothic tale of the same name, it feeds into the Halloween theme.

Architectural dignity is obviously hard to maintain. Mobs gather at the 18th-century Ropes Mansion because it was featured in the 1993 movie "Hocus Pocus." (Ghost City Tours will take you there.) And enthusiastic crowds pile into the pirate museum, basically a converted old storefront.

One shudders to think what the Puritans who held the witch trials would have thought of all this frivolity built around bar hopping and puddles of fake blood. The Puritans, after all, banned celebrations of Christmas "as were superstitiously kept in other countries, to the great dishonor of God and offence of others" — an order of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1659.

All right. People are having fun, Halloween tourism fills Salem's town coffers, and the residents can use the back roads. Far be it for we starchy moderns to deny access to the Witch Dungeon Museum.

But let us recognize that all those executed "witches" were real people caught up in a mass hysteria. They were, in essence, murdered. The witch trials were really not funny.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Thousands Switch Parties Ahead Of Super Tuesday

Thousands Switch Parties Ahead Of Super Tuesday

You’d be hard to find a voter in America who’s lived through a more turbulent primary season that this one: Donald Trump is at once a fascist insult comic pandering to the GOP’s far-far-right base and a defender of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. Bernie Sanders, throwing caution to the wind, wants Trump to win, just so he can beat him up in the general election. Hillary Clinton, having steamrolled Bernie in South Carolina, is winding up the knock-out punch that will end his campaign’s shot at the candidacy. Marco Rubio is holding on for dear life, and so is Ted Cruz — but barely.

And voters are panicking: What can we do to save our country from this clown car?

For tens of thousands of people, the answer is to switch parties.

As Super Tuesday voting rolls across these United States, thousands of voters will cast their ballot for the first time as recent Republican and Democratic converts. Some are following the appeal of a magnetic outsider. Others are seemingly in it to wreak havoc: by voting for Donald Trump, who will certainly damage his party’s chances in November.

The Boston Herald reported that 16,000 Massachusetts voters have renounced their Democratic affiliation in order to be counted as independents. Six thousand Republicans did the same. In Massachusetts, which is having its primary today, voters do not need to have picked a party to vote.

Not so with Oklahoma, another Super Tuesday state: Only Republicans can vote in Oklahoma’s Republican primary, while the Democratic portion of the contest is open to both Democrats and unaffiliated voters. Over 8,300 changed their party affiliation in the state — almost 4,000 of them became Republicans. Oklahoma saw its registrations surge by almost 30,000 between Jan. 15 and Feb. 5, the last day voters in the state could register before today’s primary.

Oklahoma is far from the only state that has seen the number of voter registrations skyrocket. Alabama, one of several southern states in the Super Tuesday crop, is anticipating a bumper turnout — Secretary of State John Merill told AL.com that his office is looking at “anywhere between 34 percent and 42 percent of the state’s more than 3 million registered voters.”

Some responsibility for these numbers lies with Donald Trump – he’s galvanized new voters and inspired thousands to switch parties. At least, that’s what Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin credits for today’s potentially record turnout. The state’s Democratic executive director Matt Fenlon, meanwhile, cites The Trump Effect for getting Republicans to the polls to vote for anyone in the party except the New York billionaire.

Florida, which holds its closed primary March 15, has already seen several thousand voters switch party affiliation. In Miami-Dade county, the state’s most populous, 9,268 people changed their parties.

In Ohio, one representative introduced a bill which would prevent voters from changing their affiliation within 30 days of a primary election, in addition to parties allowing new members to register within that time frame. It’s meant, in Rep. John Becker’s words to Cleveland.com, to thwart off “shenanigans” — efforts to derail a candidate or prop up another. He was referring specifically to a campaign by Rush Limbaugh in 2008 that was intended to eliminate Barack Obama from winning Ohio — which had a detrimental effect in that state, among others.

As the tallies trickle out tonight and in the coming weeks, we’ll see what really drove thousands of people to switch parties: Are they really there for Trump — or there to stop him?

Photo: Virginia voters line up early to cast their ballots in Super Tuesday elections at the Wilson School in Arlington, Virginia March 1, 2016.  REUTERS/Gary Cameron 

A Market In Boston For Every Taste And Price Point

A Market In Boston For Every Taste And Price Point

By Ellen Creager, Detroit Free Press (TNS)

BOSTON — It’s hard to pack an organic egg in your suitcase.

Still, tourists can find souvenirs galore at Boston’s newest tourist attraction, the Boston Public Market. You may even find lunch.

“Bring a knife, and you can get some smoked sausage, some bread and cheese, and you’ve got lunch to go,” says Becky Stillman of Stillman Quality Meats, standing next to her family’s bierwurst case.

Opened on July 30, the year-round indoor public market features products and produce from across New England. The wide, bright space near Boston’s North End is next to the Rose Kennedy Greenway park. It also is near Boston’s tourism heart, Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall.

Inside, the aisles are still being populated with permanent vendors. Each is more artist than farmer. One sells Rhode Island-made capocollo cured meats. Another features dairy products from the Massachusetts Cheese Guild. You can buy fresh fruit vinegar. Handcrafted chocolate. Perfect sunflowers. Piles of heirloom tomatoes show nary a blemish.

I visited the public market twice on a Saturday, once in early morning with few visitors and once in the late afternoon when it was packed.

Although geared to fresh food, there are plenty of options for souvenir-hunting tourists. You can buy raw honey from a Massachusetts beekeeper. You’ll find fieldstone trivets, where all the fieldstone comes from old stone farm walls in New England. You can purchase bowls made from wood salvaged from fallen trees in the region.

The Public Market also has a new demonstration kitchen and a seasonal outdoor market on Sundays and Wednesdays.

The market is fun. It is sure to have an effect. I’m just not sure on whom.

Why? Cost. That artisanal handmade sausage is $17 a pound; beeswax candles are $12, and a type of cheese called Pinnacle is $25.99 a pound. Come to this area on a Saturday, and it seems that most of the actual grocery-shopping public is directly next door at the chaotic, lowbrow, outdoor Haymarket farmers market where you can buy five lemons for $1.

Of course, walk two blocks farther, and you are at the biggest traditional market of all: Quincy Market at Faneuil Marketplace, the city’s most visited tourist attraction.

Quincy Market was saved from the wrecker’s ball in 1976. Today, it is a food colonnade surrounded by a web of buildings, push-carts and shops, where you can buy everything from Sunglass Hut shades to shadow lanterns. Inside the hot, aromatic building, shoulder-to-shoulder tourists quaff chowder and shawarma, curry and cheese steaks. The building still has great bones, especially the center court with an oval balcony and sweeping staircase. Faneuil Hall Marketplace is about to embark on a needed renovation – and longtime tenants are afraid they’ll be up-scaled right out of their space.

Across the street from Quincy Market, climb a few steps and you are inside the Great Hall of Faneuil Hall. The old building known for its role in hatching the American Revolution is a National Historic Landmark. And it is hushed and cool in comparison to the chaos outside.

Tourists sit quietly, observing the expansive and serene colonial architecture.

One can imagine firebrand patriot Samuel Adams arguing here, and he certainly did, back in the day. One can also imagine the Son of Liberty taking a break, wandering outside through the clanging streets and markets of Boston of today.

I picture Adams wandering past Quincy Market’s push carts and chain stores and into the new Boston Public Market, sniffing and analyzing. I see him walking past the kiosks and pausing to hear the vendors’ stories. Products from New England! Hardworking small farmers! Heirloom tomatoes! Trivets from fieldstone and bowls from fallen trees!

That’s how you build a country, Sam Adams would say. Hard work. American ingenuity. Shopping locally. One organic egg at a time.

Then, he’d give it his stamp of approval.
___

IF YOU GO

Boston Public Market is at 100 Hanover Street, next to the Haymarket T stop on the Green Line. It is a couple blocks from Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market. It is open Wednesday-Sunday year-round, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Free.

Lodging: Ouch. Plan to spend about $250 a night even for a mid-range hotel. If you want to focus your stay on the North End near the Boston Public Market, think about staying in Cambridge near the Green Line.

Nearby attractions:
_ Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall Marketplace: 200,000 square feet, 70 shops, food colonnade.
_ Rose Kennedy Greenway: Created after the Big Dig buried the unsightly freeway underground. Now mature plantings and fountains make it a pleasant walkway.

(c)2015 Detroit Free Press. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Cape Cod’s Natural Beauty Provides Perfect Summertime Escape

Cape Cod’s Natural Beauty Provides Perfect Summertime Escape

By Peter Marteka, The Hartford Courant (TNS)

CAPE COD, Massachusetts –The Cape Cod experience, for some, is lathering on the sunscreen, grabbing the boogie board and riding the waves of the cold Atlantic Ocean. For others, it’s eating freshly shucked oysters and cracking a boiled lobster and extracting meat like a skilled surgeon.

But for me, the Cape Cod experience is the scent of the pitch pines and crunch of pine needles under foot. It’s the sun-setting across Cape Cod Bay. It’s standing high on a dune looking out across the Atlantic– “stand there and put all America behind” you, as Henry David Thoreau wrote in his book “Cape Cod.”

For me, the best of Cape Cod runs from Chatham north to the tip of Provincetown. This is the home of Cape Cod National Seashore and its 43,500 acres of kettle holes, pitch pine and scrub oak forests and miles of high dunes and sandy beaches.

The seashore was created on Aug. 7, 1961, when President John F. Kennedy signed a bill preserving more than 26,500 acres. During a dedication ceremony in 1966, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall said the new national park was dedicated to “all people who search for a rendezvous with the land.”

“Beyond the noise and asphalt and ugly architecture we yearn for the long waves and the beach grass,” he said.

So here are a few spots along the Cape’s bended arm–beyond the miniature golf courses and seafood shacks–where visitors can still find Cape Cod on a hike or by visiting a piece of its nautical past.

FORT HILL

Although many believe the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Salt Pond Visitor Center is the gateway into the park, your first stop should be Fort Hill, in Eastham. Saved from the bulldozer and subdivisions of huge homes by the creation of the park, the hill has panoramic views across Nauset Marsh to the dunes and waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

From the top of the hill, visitors can see a former Coast Guard station rising high on a bluff. Fishing boats pass in and out of an inlet in the marsh and into the Atlantic Ocean. A hiking trail takes visitors through a field filled with wildflowers. A huge glacial erratic boulder sits near the marsh, a popular climbing spot for children and the young-at-heart.

The trail continues past rock walls–an homage to the area’s agricultural past dating back to the 1600s–and winds back through the fields to the Penniman House, the former home of whaling captain Edward Penniman. He went to sea at 11 years old and by age 29 was captain of his own ship traveling across the world in search of whales.

From Route 6 in Eastham, turn east onto Governor Prence Road, then go right on Fort Hill Road and travel to the parking area at the end of the road. Tours of the Penniman House are 11 a.m. Monday and Friday. There is an open house 1-3 p.m. on Wednesdays.

Perhaps the most famous lighthouse within the national seashore is Nauset Light, which adorns Cape Cod Potato Chip bags. The lighthouse is also the location of the popular Nauset Light Beach.

But before Nauset Light and potato chips, three clapboard lighthouses known as “The Three Sisters” warned mariners of the treacherous sand bars along Cape Cod. Today, the Sisters’ new home is in the middle of an oak and pitch pine forest just to the west of Nauset Light. A trail wraps around the three lighthouses, with a paved path leading to Nauset Light.

“The station got a nickname early on its career,” according to the book “Life On The Edge, The Lighthouses of Nauset” by J. Brian West. “From offshore, the three towers looked like three ladies in white dresses with black dress hats and veils peering over the edge of the cliff.”

Take Route 6 in Eastham and turn east onto Brackett Road. At end of the road, take a left on Nauset Road and then a right on Cable Road. Look for three lighthouses in the woods about a mile on the left. Tours are 5 p.m. on Sunday and Tuesday with parking at Nauset Light Beach.

WELLFLEET BAY WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

Although its outside the borders of the seashore, the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s 937-acre sanctuary showcases the beauty of the Cape Cod Bay side of the outer Cape. With five miles of trails, the sanctuary is home to just about every kind of ecosystem on the Cape, from tidal creeks and marshes filled with scurrying fiddler crabs to deep pitch pine forests and moors filled with wild blueberry bushes.

There are a number of overlooks, both man-made and natural, that offer panoramic views of Cape Cod Bay and Great Island. At low tide, the ghostly Billingsgate Island can be seen out in Cape Cod Bay. The island was once home to a fishing community in the 19th century before eroding away. A hike out to Try Island offers some of the most beautiful views.

Take Route 6 to Wellfleet/Eastham border and turn west into the sanctuary. There is a fee of $5 for adults and $3 for children.

MARCONI SITE/ATLANTIC WHITE CEDAR SWAMP

The Marconi Site in Wellfleet is where Guglielmo Marconi–“The Father of Radio”–built his station that sent the first trans-Atlantic wireless telegram from President Theodore Roosevelt to England’s King Edward VII in 1903.

Today, only a few cement pads remain where the towers once sat. But the site is home to one of the highest points on the Outer Cape, giving it one of the best views not only of the moors and dunes along the Atlantic, but also out to Cape Cod Bay.

The area is also home to the extremely rare Atlantic White Cedar Swamp. It’s the kind of forest that greeted explorers when they first landed on Cape Cod. Only a patch of it remains today, with a 1.2-mile trail winding through a pitch pine forest and boardwalk through the dark swamp filled with huge cedar trees, many of them more than a century old.

Turn east off Route 6 at Marconi Beach and then take a quick left for the Marconi site. Follow that to a parking area at the end of the road for both the Marconi site and the Atlantic White Cedar Swamp trail.

UNCLE TIM’S BRIDGE

For many, a wooden bridge across a tidal creek is about as Cape Cod as it gets. And Uncle Tim’s Bridge in Wellfleet is a great spot to see the sunset or explore the skeleton of the old Cape Cod Railroad bridge.

The bridge spans Duck Creek and allows visitors to watch the tides rise and fall and explore an island with views out to Wellfleet Harbor. A hike along the island’s shore will lead to the old railroad bed and the remains of a bridge that once crossed the creek, bringing rail passengers to Provincetown.

Traveling Route 6, turn west onto Main Street in Wellfleet. Take a left on Commercial Street and look for Uncle Tim’s Bridge on the left. There is a small parking area just past the bridge.

NORTH TRURO AIR FORCE STATION

Over the past few years, television shows that focus on life after humans have become very popular. A setting for one of those shows could be the former North Truro Air Force Station, a link to our Cold War past abandoned since 1985.

Today, the base is home to the Highlands Center at Cape Cod National Seashore–a burgeoning scientific, arts and education community. It is also home to the Woods Walk at Highlands Center, a mile-long trail that wraps around the former radar base to an overlook high above the Atlantic Ocean.

Visitors can walk abandoned streets to see the remains of military housing and helipads losing their battle against the Cape Cod forest. Old chain-link fencing is rusting among the bearberry with the blue backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean in the background. An old radar dome that once monitored the skies for Soviet bombers and nuclear missiles stands on a bluff.

Follow Route 6 to Truro, turn east onto South Highland Road and then take a right on Old Dewline Road to the old base. There are tours at 3 p.m. on Sundays.

“Millions of people will come here in search of solitude, peace of mind and rejuvenation of the spirit which comes from communing with nature and here they will find what they seek,” former Massachusetts Gov. John A. Volpe said at the dedication ceremony for the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1966.

That remains true today as visitors head off to discover their own Cape Cod escape.

Photo by Steve Guzzardi via Flickr