Tag: new england
Trump food aid program

Trump’s Food Aid Program Swindles Hard-Hit Northeast States

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

President Donald Trump's signature food aid program is sending less relief to New York and New England than other parts of the country, even though the Northeast has the most coronavirus cases. Some states — Maine and Alaska at least — have been left out completely so far.

The regional imbalances are an unintended side effect of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's strategy in hiring private contractors to distribute food, the agency said. It is now looking for ways to reach areas that were passed over.

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Down The Cape And To The Islands

Down The Cape And To The Islands

By Ellen Creager, Detroit Free Press (TNS)

BARNSTABLE, Mass. — Rotaries. Lobstah rolls. Beaches. Widows’ walks.

Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are the popular kids of summer vacation.

The Obamas just stayed two weeks on trendy Martha’s Vineyard. This summer’s best-selling beach book, “Rumors,” is set in tony Nantucket. Cape Cod is so coveted that vacationers spend hours inching along in miles of traffic just to get there.

Filled with New Englanders and New Yorkers, the Cape and islands can make a regular person from, say, Michigan, feel like an outsider (“Why does WBZ radio keep telling the weather for the Cayman Islands?” I ask, prompting my husband, normally a nice guy but who, after all, is from Massachusetts, to laugh hysterically at my Midwest dimwit ears that can’t hear “Cape and islands,” which is what this area is collectively called).

There is, however, one thing that makes it worthwhile to join the teeming throngs spreading to Falmouth and Edgartown and Oak Bluffs and Chatham and Nantucket and Hyannis. Beauty. Sheer beauty.

That, and the feeling that you stepped into a novel, where everything is more vivid than in your plain old dull life back home.

Where’s the ferry?

The first problem people who are not from the East have is figuring out where the heck these places are. Is the Cape an island? How far is Martha’s Vineyard, and is that a city or what? Where does Nantucket fit into the picture?

So a basic geography lesson. All of them are in Massachusetts. The Cape is part of the mainland, south of Boston and Plymouth. It is an hourlong fast ferry trip from Cape Cod to the islands of Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard.

The Cape is 339 square miles, and the Vineyard is 87, and Nantucket is 105. All of them have cars and traffic jams. In winter, lots of people still live on the Cape, but the islands empty of vacationers.

Wealth-wise, Nantucket is the most exclusive, followed by the Vineyard, then the Cape. History-wise, all of these places are significant: settled by native people for a thousand years and by Westerners since the 1600s.

Everyone on the Cape and islands thinks they are special. Maybe they are.

The real star, however, is the climate. Temperate and mild in summer and winter, it always smells good here, with a bracing salt tang and the scent of scrub pines. The light is gentle, with vivid riots of daisies and effervescent blue hydrangeas. The houses are a soothing gray. Down Cape, on the far eastern edge, the Atlantic sweeps in hard on the shore, but the rest of the beaches are delightful and somewhat protected.

Where can a beginner start? I’d recommend visiting Cape Cod in the fall _ September and October _ and taking day trips to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Here are a few tips to get you started:

  • Cape Cod: More than other destinations, you will feel the whispers and ghostly presence of generations of vacationers who have been here before you. It is big, so don’t try to see it all. First-timers should try to get out to see the Cape Cod National Seashore, a windswept and rather forbidding swath of natural beauty. For fun, shop in downtown Falmouth, wander the art shacks by the harbor in Hyannis, eat cantaloupe ice cream at the famous Four Seas in Centerville; take a whale watch tour. The Kennedy legacy is big on the Cape; the Kennedy Museum in Hyannis is moderately interesting. You will find excellent beaches all along the southern Cape and warm water through September. Fall is a great festival time, with the Scallop Festival in September and the Wellfleet Oysterfest in October. By the time you leave, you’ll be feeling like a local as you head “off Cape” and “over the bridge” back to the real world.
  • Nantucket: A carefully managed island so pleasing to stroll that it looks like a movie set. Thick cobblestone streets, soothing gray cedar shake homes, old mansions of brick, pale yellow and white. The stores are something to marvel at: cashmere shops, a store with giant spherical clocks, a store with $2,000 handmade Nantucket baskets and a dandy department store called Murray’s Toggery Shop. Do not miss the wonderful whaling museum here, which illuminates the island’s past. Nantucket Restaurant Week is in late September and the Nantucket Arts Festival is in October. Best deal on the island? Shuttle buses that charge only $1 for a ride to the beach or elsewhere. A nickname for Nantucket is the “Gray Lady,” but don’t call it that in casual conversation or people will look at you funny.
  • Martha’s Vineyard: A joyful island full of lively restaurants and nightlife, celebrities, conspicuous consumption and “Jaws” tourism. Known by locals as “the Vineyard,” it features notable architecture such as a string of “gingerbread” cottages in Oak Bluffs and the classic white town hall in Edgartown. Interesting beaches include the Oak Bluffs Town Beach (Inkwell) and State Beach, where part of “Jaws” was filmed. This island also has great African-American heritage sites. The Food and Wine Festival is in October. You will fit in even more if you shop at the super-preppy Vineyard Vines clothing store and wear that getup around the island.

LOBSTER ADVICE
Every restaurant on the Cape and islands has its claws into lobster rolls. With lobster in season, lobster rolls (either plain, or more authentically, mixed with mayonnaise or other secret ingredients) are on every menu. While they may be plentiful, they are not cheap. A lobster roll meal with fries and coleslaw at the classic waterfront restaurant Baxter’s in Hyannis is $23, while their chicken salad roll is $8.99.
Still. The best lobster rolls, with buns, a bit of lettuce and the lobster piled high in the fold, is a delight for those who live far from the lobster’s realm. Ranging from about $18 to $25, the sandwich sings of summer. It feels light. And it’s tasty.
One other note? Massachusetts folks are extremely particular about clam chowder. While tourists might like big chunky potatoes in their chowder, locals prefer a more authentic, quite thin, almost gritty, white soup with plenty of clams.
It may sound like a lot of regulations and rules, I know. How thin the soup. What texture the lobster. What flowers to grow. What ferries to take. What nicknames are allowed. But the Cape and the islands promise you, it’s worth it.

IF YOU GO
Getting there: Getting to Cape Cod, frankly, can be exhausting. It is 60 miles south of Boston Logan airport, but travel time can be hours if you try to cross over on a Friday afternoon or weekend, when bridge traffic backs up for miles. Once on the Cape, ferries take you to Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard. There also is air service from Boston, New York City and other cities to Cape Cod and both islands.
Lodging: Try for a house rental through Airbnb or VRBO; also check out hotels and bed and breakfasts. Rentals are not cheap, especially on Nantucket. But there is a place for you. For more good lodging links and information see www.nantucketchamber.org; www.capecodchamber.org; www.mvy.com.

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

Lobster roll at Baxter’s, a Hyannis institution on Cape Cod. (Ellen Creager/Detroit Free Press/TNS)

Farming Moves North With the Temperatures

Farming Moves North With the Temperatures

Before there was a California, New England fed itself. Somehow. The soil was lousy, the climate cold, and the diet limited (lots of cabbage, no avocados). At least there was plenty of water.

Thanks to improved transportation, the production of fruits and vegetables followed the sun, first moving to the fertile Midwest and then settling in the deserts of California. The Central Valley’s climate was close to perfect and the lack-of-rain problem fixed by moving water from elsewhere and digging deep wells.

A multiyear drought made worse by climate change has altered the assumption that California’s agricultural empire will always be able to stock the nation’s produce shelves. Warmer temperatures, meanwhile, have turned formerly inhospitably cold parts of America into contenders for that market.

This is no endorsement of climate change — let’s make that clear — but rising temperatures are breathing new life into northern agriculture. Farm economists say that the net result will be a vast expansion in America’s food growing capability.

A century ago, corn was not a viable crop above North Dakota’s southern third. But an average temperature rise of 2.7 degrees over that period has let North Dakota farmers grow feed corn up to the Canadian border. The growing season there is three weeks longer. In farming, that’s huge.

For similar reasons, soybeans now grow in upstate New York. And though the state’s Finger Lakes region has produced hardy wine grapes for a long time, milder winters have enabled it to nurture fancier European grape varieties.

As for New England, the hope is that some centuries-old farms will become profitable, as well as picturesque. Agriculture never disappeared there, but it had to concentrate on dairy products and niche crops, such as cranberries and wild blueberries. Warmer weather opens new possibilities. For example, peaches may become a commercial crop in Maine.

A paper out of Brandeis University predicts that by 2030, the New England region could have three times as much farmland as it does now, thanks to warmer weather. Should that happen, New England may end up producing half its food.

Which brings us to the concept of food miles. For more than a decade, agricultural scholars have marveled at a national system of food distribution that ships California vegetables thousands of miles to eastern cities where the same things could easily grow a few miles away.

One famous study at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture found that carrots consumed at Iowa institutions traveled an average of 1,800 miles from the conventional source (California). Had they been grown in Iowa, the average trip would have been 27 miles.

What gives? Anyone who travels the Hawkeye State feasts on vistas of horizon-to-horizon farmland. The soil is heavenly, and water falls from the skies. But a system of subsidized industrial agriculture has turned most of Iowa’s farm acreage into factories for commodity crops, mainly corn and soybeans.

Global warming seems to be also changing the distribution of rainfall. The Northwest, central states, and the South are seeing more rain and snow than they did a century ago. The Rockies and most of the Southwest are seeing less.

Again, climate change is not something to celebrate, including in places seeing opportunity in it. The northern states’ ghastly cold winters had the advantage of killing off insects. The pests now have a better chance of proliferating. In one of the sadder examples, bark beetles have been decimating the aspens of a warmer and drier Colorado.

The New England soil is still rocky. Will warmer temperatures, new seed varieties and other technological advances bolster its farming economy? Remember, it still rains there — a lot.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: Joel Dinda via Flickr

Another Snowstorm Wallops Northeast; Thousands Of Flights Canceled

Another Snowstorm Wallops Northeast; Thousands Of Flights Canceled

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

It didn’t take a groundhog to predict six more weeks of winter as the second major storm in a week created near whiteout conditions in much of New England on Monday after dumping more than a foot and a half of snow in the Chicago region and spreading a blanket of thick snow through the Midwest.

The storm was expected to bring up to 16 inches of fresh snow to the Boston area, when the precipitation stops on Monday, Groundhog Day, less than 24 hours after the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl. Boston officials on Monday announced that the victory parade would be held on Tuesday, proving that the post office is not the only institution to brave snow, sleet and rain.

The latest storm cut a wide swath through the Midwest, bringing 19.3 inches to Chicago, the city’s fifth-largest storm ever. About 2,400 customers remained without power Monday morning, down from the 51,000 who lost electricity when the storm began.

More than 5,300 flights have been canceled from Sunday through Monday because of the storm, according to flight tracking service FlightAware. Schools in states across the upper tier of the nation were closed. Four deaths related to traffic or shoveling were reported in Ohio, Nebraska and Wisconsin.

Detroit reported its largest snowfall in four decades. The National Weather Service said 16.7 inches fell at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus on Sunday and Monday, the third-largest storm ever and the largest since a 19.3-inch storm in December 1974.

Also in Michigan, the Battle Creek area got 12 to 18 inches and Ann Arbor, 14.1 inches.

From the Midwest, the storm churned its way East, bringing six to 10 inches to the Buffalo region and eight to 14 inches in the Albany area.

In downstate New York, Long Island, especially hit hard last week, was bracing for an additional three to five inches.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned residents of snow and ice, but the output was expected to be less than last week when nine to 15 inches fell on different parts of the city.

A blizzard brought up to three feet of snow to some parts of Massachusetts last week. On Monday, the state planned to work a normal day despite predictions of up to 16 more inches of snow. Schools in many areas including Boston were closed.

“We are very concerned about this current storm and its implications. Working with city departments and our private partners, we will take every precaution necessary to keep our residents safe,” said Mayor Martin J. Walsh. “I ask that every Boston resident look out for their neighbor, whether it be in the home next door, or on our city’s streets.”

“I’d encourage everyone to stay off the roads today,” Walsh said.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney Phil reportedly saw his shadow, indicating six more weeks of winter, according to legend.

The Weather Service routinely notes that the Groundhog Day test has no predictive value, though it spawned a hit movie and rodent imitators around the country.

Photo: David Cislinski, whose car is buried in snow parked on Stockton Drive, tries to shovel it out despite high winds and blowing snow on Feb. 1, 2015 in Chicago. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune/TNS)