My review of Harvey Silverglate's Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

Below is my review of Three Felonies A Day that appeared in the Sturbridge Times April 2016 issue.

Big Brother Is Watching and Ready to Pounce

Book Review by Richard Morchoe

When you get up this morning, you're in trouble. You don’t realize It, but you are a criminal. Yes my fellow average American, it may be true. By the time sleep comes over us, thrice we will have transgressed Federal Law.

That is the contention of Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Attorney Harvey Silverglate. Is it more than hyperbole?

Attorney Silverglate is not without qualifications. With a Harvard Law degree, he has been an advocate for civil liberties for over four decades. More recently, he has been concerned with free speech issues on campus. Along with Professor Alan Kors he authored The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses. Both men are in no sense conservatives so their critique of the tyranny of political correctness, as it holds sway in college, carries some weight.

The two men co-founded the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Attorney Silverglate is Chairman of the Board of Directors.

The book's argument is maybe best illustrated by two cases, that of Theodore Anzalone and that of Bradford Councilman. Though almost two decades apart, they bookend the descent of the American legal system in its willingness to ruin lives for little purpose.

In the early eighties, Theodore Anzalone was a fundraiser for Boston mayor Kevin White. The then U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, William Weld, wanted to take down White and the way to do it would be to get someone to testify against him. Getting something on Anzalone and making a deal for his testimony was the plan.

The Feds got a conviction on Anzalone for splitting up deposits and making them for under $10,000 so that the bank would not have to report them. Legal at the time, the judge decided on his own that it was still a crime and the jury agreed.

The appeals court saw through Weld's gimmicky prosecution and the judge's bad instructions and reversed the verdict. They did the right thing, but would they always?

Almost two decades later, the same court, but with a different makeup, did not. Bradford Councilman was Vice President of a company that provided an online listing service for rare and out of print books. His company also supplied email addresses and served in that capacity as an ISP or internet service provider.

Councilman was accused of backing up client messages in order to get an unfair advantage in pricing and violating the federal wiretap statute. The accused claimed he never read the messages, Was storing them a crime?

The appeals court went back and forth and finally under intense pressure reversed the district court judge's dismissal. We have come from the Anzalone case where the tribunal refused to see a crime where one wasn't to what is now the opposite. The judiciary increasingly is all too willing to cooperate almost as part of the prosecution.

Silverglate notes the result of this is many ruined lives and shattered civil relationships when things that should not be crimes are so interpreted. This is not to say there are not real criminals in the world doing evil, but the prosecutors need not seek to find everything a crime.

Can anything be done?

Alan Dershowitz, in his foreword, suggested that the attorney general should not be the appointee of the president and thus not political. The author does not think that would do much and it is hard to disagree.

Attorney Silverglate seems to suggest everybody behave better and who would not want that? Defenders should see themselves in this climate as civil liberties lawyers and the press should be far more skeptical. Good ideas but hardly enough.

The author notes that there are many vague laws that can be stretched to catch the citizen for crimes he was unaware of. Maybe we need to reduce the number of statutes and their size. As Cicero noted, “A corrupt state has many laws.” One should expect a long wait for that.

Silverglate has laid out a compelling case concerning prosecutorial overreach. Do we, out here in the exurbs, have to worry about three indictments du jour? Probably not for most of us if only because we are too low for the radar. That hardly means it is not a problem. It could happen even if it doesn't.

You might say, at least no one gets killed. Well, not exactly.

Last year Harvey Silverglate would be a featured speaker at a rally in memory of Aaron Swartz. Swartz had been involved in what could be called a case of electronic trespass and theft. The state had seemed to come to the conclusion that it had been much ado about not too much and were ending their involvement. At this point, Carmen Ortiz, US Attorney for Massachusetts grabbed it. According to Silverglate, "Tragedy intervened when Ortiz’s office took over the case to 'send a message'."

The squeeze on Swartz did send a message and Swartz, an internet freedom activist, would commit suicide.

That message was not just for Aaron.

Review-Burning Up the Air, Jerry Williams, Talk Radio and the Life In Between

Below is my review of Burning Up the Air, Jerry Williams, Talk Radio and the Life In Between by Steve Elman and Alan Tolz as it appeared in the April, 2008 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Talk show icon Jerry Williams wasn’t a bad guy

The year was either 1957 or 1958. The volume on my radio was low enough so that my parents could not hear it downstairs. I was listening to early rock and roll when I should have been sleeping. Usually, I tired quickly, turned off the red motorola set and fell asleep. One night, not being sleepy after the 10:00 p.m. news, I heard the promo for the next show. Thinking it might be more music, I kept listening.

It wasn’t song, it was a force of nature. It was Jerry Williams, the man who was pioneering talk radio in the Boston area. He can claim as much as anyone to have invented the genre. From the mid-fifties to the new millennium he was on Boston Radio with a few breaks for a mid-life crisis here and there. For much of the time,Williams was the dominant radio personality in the market.

Two of his many producers have collected everything that could be found about the man and have talked to everyone they could to put together a biography that is a page turner. Burning Up the Air, Jerry Williams, Talk Radio and the Life In Between reads as if it were a labor of love. Not that the authors, Steve Elman and Alan Tolz, were likely to be above wanting to throttle the man on occasion. From their tales, it is obvious Williams could try the patience of a saint.

It’s all in the book. How he probed callers to get a story or an answer. Occasionally, when he found himself battling with a particularly, unreasonable caller, he would shoot out a familiar line:“They’re out there tonight!” Later, as he aged, and even though you knew he would do nothing else but radio, he would vent his frustration by shouting, “I’m getting out of the business.”

A high school drop-out, actually, a high school flunk-out, Jerry still had an expert knowledge of many issues. But it was not only mere knowledge, it was what he knew how to position that information that set him apart. The authors make the point about how he “knew how to select the hottest topics for discussion, how to set things up in an hour, how to strike sparks in an interview, how to smoke out and shape good calls, how to keep the momentum going.” Today’s crop of talkers don’t really seem to be as skillful as Williams.

There is another aspect of his popularity that I had never thought about before reading this book. While one may not call his voice operatic, it was pleasant and in no way grating as are many on the radio today. Elman and Tolz discussed his training under a mentor. Jerry had a voice described as a “high baritone.” His acting coach, Bob Breyer, told him how to use the voice and through training in radio plays,Williams must have learned something.

Through the book, one can recognize the political changes in Massachusetts and the nation such that Jerry, uber liberal through the first part of his career, was by the end considered a conservative by many. He never thought he went through a metamorphosis from one political view to another. The authors describe his outlook,“Jerry had always presented himself on and of the air as his own man. Since the late sixties, he’d been uncomfortable with labels of all sorts. When forced to choose from conventional terms, he might opt for “liberal,” even when he felt that what had come to be known as “liberalism” had moved toward something completely alien to his feeling about the role of government.” He was uncomfortable with Dukakis in power as he had been with Nixon. He probably gagged at the description by a Boston Globe writer, Clea Simon, that he had purveyed “conservative chat.”

The structure of the book is chronological except for the last chapter. The authors intersperse a timeline of the major national and world events that are happening contemporaneously so one is never lost for the era. Event follows event in sequence and the reader will be through it in no time. He was not a perfect man and the authors present him, in the words of Oliver Cromwell, “warts and all.” I’m not sure how it will resonate with anyone who has never heard of him. After all, his show, no matter the issue and the impact, was personal. The authors have a website (http://www.jerrywilliams.org/) with a lot of audio clips that might give a small flavor for the man.

Many folks in this area got to experience Jerry during the campaign to stop the New Braintree prison. There was a big Saturday on the New Braintree Common. Williams was there as more or less MC. Next to him was a mock up of Michael Dukakis. During a lull, Jerry all of a sudden, with perfect delivery, said,“and now a word from Kitty (Dukakis). Pause. MEOW.” The crowd convulsed in laughter. It should have been in the book.

One other item that should have been in the book was that he was the only supporter of busing who ever admitted that it had all been a mistake. He always seemed to be full of himself, but I’ve never heard anyone else admit it. As Jerry used to say of people he felt okay about, he was “not a bad guy.”

Of course, Elman and Tolz couldn’t include every minute of his life. No matter, there is a lot covering an interesting man and his times. He did not engender neutrality in people.You either loved or hated him. I don’t know what was written as the cause of death on his certificate, but I’m sure it was not a dearth of personality.

Please note, the website appears to have disappeared.

The boys who brought us the Cold War

Below is the review of The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War by Stephen Kinzer as submitted to the editor of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.  It ran in the March, 2016 issue.

The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War

By Stephen Kinzer

St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition, 2014

Paperback, 416 pages

Book review by Richard Morchoe

Stephen Kinzer begins his book, the The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War, with the funeral of John Foster Dulles. Having died in office, the author avers that “a bereft nation mourned more intensely than it had sense the death of Franklin Roosevelt fourteen years before.”

Kinzer was right. I was nine years old and remember it on television, ending with the widow being presented the flag. It was the most moving civic ceremony I had witnessed up until that time. The funeral of President Kennedy would be more memorable, but that could not be otherwise.

My mother explained to me who the man was and what it was that made him so important. He had been a great man and had well served the nation's foreign policy. No controversy there.

As time went on, more would be revealed to me about world politics and our nations interactions with states that were not part of what we called the “Free World.” Mostly we were competing with them in a “Cold War.” We did not fight directly, but there was an ongoing struggle.

Less than two years after Dulles' death, our policy went a bit off the rails. An armed group landed on Cuba with the intent of overthrowing the regime. The little invasion was a horrible botch and the men, who were considered “Freedom Fighters,” captured. The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been responsible for the planning and execution of the debacle and its leader lost his job. That man was the Late Secretary of State's brother, Allen Dulles.

Not long after that, our war would be a lot less cold in Viet Nam and we would leave with nothing to show for it.

We were shy of major effort after South East Asia until Bush père fought Gulf War I and the Soviet Union imploded. After that and 911, we thought we could run the table. In this the last year of the Obama continuation of the younger Bush's foreign policy, it's not working.

This is why reading a book by veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer is not a bad idea. I became aware of the man while reading a column of his from the December 15, 2015 Boston Globe. The article was a well reasoned analysis of a”conservative” foreign policy that George McGovern could have lived with. With the rise of Sanders and Trump, a public might be open to it as well.

His tome about the Dulles team does a wonderful job of describing their domination of intel and foreign policy during the Eisenhower administration.

The brothers were descended from Scotch-Irish calvinists and that ancestry would not be without influence in how they viewed the world. Each would express it differently. Though not a family of plutocrats on the level of a Morgan or Rockefeller, they were well connected and influential people who went to the right schools and knew and were related to the right people.

John Foster was the older of the two and was always referred to as Foster. He was steady and paid attention to detail. That made him an excellent functionary and he would become the head of what was arguably the nation's most influential law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell.

Allen, had more of a fun personality and probably thought himself as a bit of a swashbuckler. He was never going to be the office drudge, but he would make his mark as well.

Foster, through a family connection would serve as US legal counsel at the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. He would also act ably on the War Reparations Committee and as ably expanded his contacts that would be of use when he returned to Sullivan & Cromwell.

Allen pursued a diplomatic career. In 1917, upon being assigned to Bern, Switzerland at the beginning of American involvement in war, he was called on to take charge of intelligence. It was a task he took to with gusto.

The brothers would continue on a trajectory of power and influence. Allen would have essentially the same role in World War II, but on a grander scale. Though always active, Foster was not a direct participant in the war. He did end as a major foreign policy figure in the Republican party.

In the Eisenhower administration, they would rise to the top of their respective fields. Allen would become the head of the CIA and Foster would helm State. The 50s looked to become their decade.

They had a couple of major successes. The CIA would remove the secular prime minister in Iran to further national interest, or at least Big Oil's. In Guatemala, the elected president was toppled as a suspected communist not necessarily to the detriment of the US held United Fruit Company.

Then there were the non-successes, most glaringly the abovementioned Bay of Pigs invasion that ended in complete failure for the agency and triumph for Castro. This happened after Foster's passing, but on Allen's watch and made his directorship untenable. The 50s were over and so was the Dulles era.

The legacy of the successes did not even last. That Iranian coup left a bad taste and when the Ayatollahs arrived, we were out and so was secularism.

Foster and Allen were intelligent men who had studied with great minds but at the end of the day, the record is tarnished. They were sure they were in a death struggle with the forces of evil and that if the war of good and evil were not won, all would be lost.

After a short respite with the end of the Soviet Union, that low temp war is back and threatening to warm up in Syria. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt were part of engineering a coup to remove an elected government in Ukraine. Not much has been learned.

A lot of folks at Foggy Bottom need to read Mr. Kinzer's book.

Celebrating Black History Month on Long Hill

Below is my column, as submitted to the editor, that appeared in the February 2016 Sturbridge Times Magazine.

Long Hill Road celebrates Black History Month

by Richard Morchoe

It is February and time again for Black History Month. We have decided to observe it up on Long Hill, but not in the usual manner. All the civil rights pioneers and cultural icons are feted, most now post mortem, again and again. Who has not been honored in the second month celebration?

Up here on our hill, we consider ourselves an outpost of high culture. In consideration of that, we have decided to profile three men who were not merely artists, but exemplars of European civilization. Yet all three, had they been living in the American South at a certain time, would have been subject to Jim Crow laws.

It must also be observed that none of the enforcers of such statutes ever produced anything to compare with our subjects.

The work of the first name is known to everyone, or at least anyone who has gone to the movies. The Three Musketeers has been put on the big screen over 25 times and has had several animated versions. It is a novel that just cried for translation to film.

Set around the first quarter of the 17^th Century, there is little lacking in the portrayal of France and Europe in the era. There are of course, the Musketeers themselves who swashbuckle around the realm constantly crossing swords with all who serve what passed in those days for the Dark Side.

That Dark Side is represented by Cardinal Richelieu. The Cardinal was arguably the most able statesman of the age. He was also a subtle intriguer, and thus a man easy to portray as evil incarnate.

The Musketeers and their protege, d'Artagnan wish to protect the queen against the machinations of the prelate

How did it happen that the grandson of a slave came to write the quintessential French novel?

Alexandre Dumas' father had been born a slave,. The nobleman dad took his slave son to France. Since the Middle Ages, slavery had been abolished on French soil. The minute the young man stepped on Gallic ground he was free.

Dumas' dad had him educated and enlisted in the French Army. He eventually became the highest ranking black general ever in any European military. Thus the son had been born into some privilege. This is not to say he had any love for the Ancien Regime. Dad, after all, had been part of Napoleon's army.

The Three Musketeers is not pro-monarchy.

His other work, about as famous, The Count of Monte Cristo, may not have as many sword fights, but it does not lack for adventure. It begins as Napoleon is about make his last throw of the dice. A young sailor, Edmond Dantes is framed and imprisoned in a French Alcatraz, The Chateau d'If. His escape and adventures lead to fame and fortune. The tone of this novel is also anti-monarchy. No matter the politics, it's a great tale. Few writers have produced anything more French than this descendant of Africa.

When we think of Russia, maybe Putin comes to mind, or Stalin or the Gulag Archipelago. Few Americans learn too much about that nation, and my knowledge is hardly exhaustive.

So it came as a shock when I learned that the man who many consider the greatest poet in that great white north was a black man and also a descendant of slaves.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born into the nobility, but his great grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, had been taken into slavery. If you are going to be in bondage, there are worse fates than being raised as part of the Tsar's household. The young man was well liked by the sovereign who stood as godfather at his baptism.

Alexander was thus, despite ancestry that would be crippling in much of the world, a nobleman.

He was also a literary giant. Pushkin's influence was most recently found in a film that featured beautiful music and a story of intrigue. The movie, Amadeus, was based on his drama Mozart and Salieri.

Pushkin was no stranger to drama in his own life. The last bit of it would be a duel in which he lost his life at the age of 37. His death would lead to more literature as many Russian writers would take up the subject.

Our last personality was not famous as a writer. In fact, he is not too famous at all. Unlike Dumas he did not write about men of action, but was himself a swashbuckler.

Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges  was the son of a rich planter and his slave wife. Brought to France and well educated, he was a prodigy as a swordsman and musician. Le Chevalier conducted orchestras, commanded troops and ran a fencing school.

All these accomplishments pale in comparison to one part of his life. The man is also known as the Black Mozart. He composed operas, concertos and a symphony, all while following other pursuits as well. For the skeptical, his music is available on iTunes, Spotify and YouTube..

Up on Long Hill Road, we hope we have broadened some horizons. There is nothing wrong with putting on an Ellington CD or reciting a poem by Hughes. Still, there can be more to life.

My Review of Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy by Michael Hudson

Below is my review of Michael Hudson's Killing the Host as submitted to the editor for the February, 2016 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.  I don't completely agree with the author, but his analysis is better than much I've read.

If you grew up in this country before the 1970s, you experienced a world that is nothing like today. Back in that other reality, there were factories in abundance employing full complements of workers, sometimes in multiple shifts.

American Optical, with beginnings in 1833, was a powerhouse, with its great factory complex in Southbridge. Once dominant in its field, it is now defunct, brought out by others.

Driving along the Quaboag River on Route 67 in Warren, you can see the Wright's Mill Complex. It seemed like everyone knew someone who worked there. Since 2008, no more.

There are still factories, but they are all too often, sans workers. How could our region, let alone country go from having workshops everywhere, all highly productive, to the point where they have almost died out?

One man has an answer, debt.

Michael Hudson is a research professor of economics at the University of Missouri Kansas City. Your reviewer discovered him accidentally. As a history nerd, I came across his writing and was surprised to find out that his research found the builders of the pyramids were not slaves but well paid, skilled workers. It's too bad Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner are no longer with us, as some corrections need to be made to their movie, the Ten Commandments.

Mr. Hudson avers that the debts owed to the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector were causing labor and industry to suffer. American labor, squeezed by debt becomes over priced as do American products. Debt is taking a greater and greater share of revenues from non-financial businesses, and workers have to pay more in interest such that they are on the way to debt peonage.

According to Professor Hudson, we are headed to the day when the parasite of a financialized economy will kill the host, or the debts will have to be reduced or even forgiven. Your average free-marketer might be scandalized by the idea, but it is no more unfair than the bailing out of the banks in 2008.

The concept is one that raised its head with the phenomenon of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Mr. Hudson, among others, noted that student loans exceed credit card debt. Paying that debt takes a toll on graduates whose salary prospects may be less than what they can afford to service the loan.

As Michael Hudson states many times in his book, “Debts that can't be paid, won't be.” The FIRE Sector would want it to be for the debtors to sell off assets. As there are less and less assets with enough equity, that is not going to be too popular and one day it will be impossible. A reduction of debt or even forgiveness would be inevitable as an alternative to national ruin.

Many consider Hudson a bit of a commie as he participates in Marxist conferences and has good words to say about Karl. To be fair, he has some nice things to say about Adam Smith and Classical Economics.

He has, however a special dislike for free market economists. He sees them as champions of the FIRE sector. Free market advocates would disagree with that characterization. They would be adamantly against the existence of a central bank and would claim the crony capitalist shenanigans were only possible because there is a Federal Reserve. That discussion is for another day. If there must be a central bank, the author's points are well taken.

In his last chapter, he offers Reforms to Restore Industrial Prosperity. Will they bring economic nirvana? Some make common sense, such as writing down debts that can't be paid and letting people stay in their homes rather than protect the second homes of Goldman and Morgan execs.

His suggestion to tax economic rent to save it from being capitalized in interest payments has merit in that we should have a tax structure that promotes production over financialization. Is his emphasis on land taxes as the way to do it the right idea?

Revoking the tax deductibility of interest has some good arguments, but will not go over too well with every home buyer.

The public banking option, similar to the Japanese Post Office banks is not a bad idea, but my local savings bank provides most of those services. The Japanese system had low interest on savings, but they had been tax free. Bring that on any old time.

Funding government deficits by central bank, and not by taxes, is, for a true believer in that system, reasonable. Of course, if you are going to create money to cover the shortfall, hey, why not fund the whole budget in the same manner. No IRS or Form 1040 would make a lot of people happy this time of year.

Paying Social Security and Medicare out of the general budget has some appeal as there are demographic problems and the last deal raided SS for $150 million for the Disability Trust Fund.

Keeping natural monopolies out of the public domain is okay. Privatizers have taken over some water departments and gouged the public. No, one, however, is remotely thinking of trying to take the MBTA away from the government.

As most capital gains are in real estate, taxing them at progressive rates should dampen speculation.

Hudson's desire to deter irresponsible lending by making the creditor bear the cost of any loan that could be considered a fraudulent conveyance is worthwhile. Many loans have been made that there was no way that they could be paid without looting assets. That should be stopped.

One question about his reforms is why he did not propose a restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act separating retail deposit banking from investment banking. It would seem if you are not going to hang investment bankers from the lamp posts, you would want to restore that law.

One might grant a federal reserve run by Mr. Hudson or someone like him would establish policies that would better serve the economy as a whole. It is hard to believe it could be anything more than an interregnum as capture by interests is what happens to bureaucracies.

Still, it should be given a try. It would be hard to do worse. If it fails, we can bring in Ron Paul to shut down the Fed.

How Sweet It Is - Maple Syrup in the Sturbridge and Quaboag area.

Below is my column as submitted to the editor for the March 1, 2016 issue of the Sturbridge Times Magazine.

by Richard Morchoe

The little boy put a few pancakes on his plate. That task done, he grabbed a jug and, proceeded to drown the flapjacks. After a short while, the syrup being absorbed, he added more. At this point, his father, no longer able to contain himself said to the lad, “Do you think you might have a little pancake with the maple syrup?”

I remember well my dad's gentle teasing as he observed the gargantuan appetite.

Maple syrup is a pleasure of life. Unfortunately, another region has done what it could to capture the brand. The Green Mountain State wants the world to believe the brown juice should not be mentioned without the word Vermont prefixed.

Don't be fooled. The syrup most associated with our northern neighbor is fraudulent. Vermont Maid Syrup is glutted with high fructose corn syrup and contains only maple flavor of natural and artificial provenance.

Fortunately, you don't have to leave town and go north for the real thing. You can head out to the back yard and produce it yourself. We are coming into the season.

Granted, it's not without some hard work. That said, the basic method is fairly simple. You may have seen those homey pictures of men emptying buckets in winter. Well most of it is like that, heavy routine labor.

The first thing you must do is make sure you have the trees. We caution you right away that, sans les arbres, the degree of difficulty reaches a level that can only be described as insurmountable. Once you are certain that you own or have permission to tap and you are sure they are sugar maples, proceed.

Next, you need taps, at least one for each tree. They are available at farm stores and some hardware shops. Make sure your drill is working and you have a 7/16” bit. A clean plastic gallon milk jug with a hole made off to the side at the top can be used to catch sap.

For storing fresh sap, clean is the word. Depending on volume, it could be galvanized or plastic cans or pails. A deep metal pan that can hold five gallons should do for an evaporator.

Your going to be boiling on a wood fire outside so set that up and gather dry fast burning wood. You want to do it out of doors or there will be problems, but not for the gas or electric company as they will clean up, and so will you, differently.

Locate a candy thermometer to test when the syrup is done. You will need clean glass or metal jars for storing. Did we mention clean?

Ready, drill the hole and bang in the spout, but not so hard you split the tree. Hang your jug or container on the hook of the spout. Be sure to cover to keep out rain, snow and foreign material.

That fireplace you set up should be ready. When the jugs have enough sap, fill the pan, and start the fire. Don't fill your pan to the top as it will boil over. As the water boils away keep adding more sap to the pan. Do not have less than an inch in the pan or it may burn down. Keep pouring the rest of the sap in to the boiling liquid. It will take a lot of boiling to get it to syrup as about ten gallons of sap make one quart.

Sap is finished when it is seven degrees warmer than boiling temperature at your elevation. That's what the candy thermometer is for. Pour the hot syrup through a syrup filter or a double layer of outing flannel. Store in sterile canning jars in a cool place. A freezer is ideal.

So that is the basic process. Full disclosure, we did it once. It is work and maybe you were born to do it. Most of us, however, would be satisfied with just the finished product. You probably have a neighbor or at least someone in the vicinity who boils. If you don't know anyone, read the list of local producers below.

In Sturbridge, KE Farms is on Leadmine Road. They have a website at http://www.maplesugarhouse.com/index.html with everything you want to know about their operation.

Maple Ledge Farm is in Holland on Vinton Road. Best to connect with them through Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/maple.ledge/.

On Little Alum Road in Brimfield is the stand of Freeman Farm. To contact Jane or John call (413) 436-7621.

On the south side of West Brookfield, Amy and Jeff and their son Nick, boil sap this time of year. If you are interested the email is jeffrobbins@charter.net or (508) 867-5428.

Same town on Long Hill Road is the Meade's Bucket List Farm. Call (508) 637-1297 or email at thomas.meade53@yahoo.com.

Head a little south on that street and you come to a farm operated by Abraham and his family and they have a website at http://browniefarms.com/maple-syrup/.

Up in North Brookfield, the Warren Farm and Sugarhouse has been around forever. They are on the web at http://www.thewarrenfarm.com.

The Harms Family Farm operates in Brookfield and way out in Colrain. Their web address is http://www.harmsfarm.com/.

East Brookfield has Triple Oaks Farm Sugarhouse owned by Lori And William Gregoire. They can be reached at (508) 294-5990.

If you still are bound and determined with that unquenchable do it yourself spirit, a better set of instructions is provided at the Massachusetts Maple Producers website www.massmaple.org/make.php. They can also help if you decide to turn pro.

We'll be thinking of you as we pour warm syrup on hot pancakes.

Review of The Quaboag And Nipmuck Indians: The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley

Below is my review of The Quaboag And Nipmuck Indians: The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley as submitted to the editor of The Sturbridge Times Magazine for the October 2015 issue.  

The Quaboag And Nipmuck Indians: The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley By Donald Duffy

Book review by Richard Morchoe

It has been said that the closest a human population has ever experienced to an invasion from outer space was the American Indian encounter with Europeans. To say that the native population was blindsided is understatement. Out of the blue, beings with different appearance, outlook, history and customs appear, and the invaded must make sense of it, quickly.

No more was that the case than out here in Western Central Massachusetts. The indigenous people had to deal with a geopolitical situation for which they were not and could not be ready.

The meeting of English and Indian in our region has been the subject of a few books. The latest is The Quaboag and Nipmuck Indians. The subtitle, The Quaboag Indians, A Loup People and the Nipmucks of the Upper Quinebaug River Valley is descriptive of where the people lived and that's where we live. The Quaboag tribe made home along that river and the Quinebaug, where it flows through Sturbridge, was the abode of a segment of the Nipmucks.

The author, Donald Duffy of Palmer, has not written a book that will replace any that went before, but is an addition to the genre and stands on its own. The author refers to previous work in the text and the bibliography.

What is an enjoyable aspect is the exploration of geography. The author goes over the conjecture of where places really were. This is useful as we are dealing with a population that had no written language. Never was the term, lost in translation more apt. There are often many spellings for a place. The Brits did as well as they could phonetically, except when they didn't.

Language misunderstandings were a problem, mostly for the indigenes. The settlers had a talent, if not genius for putting more into a deed then the sellers thought was included.

One bit of difficulty for the reviewer is the Massachusetts Indian campaign against the Mohawk. In 1669, an alliance of tribes from the Pioneer Valley eastward mounted an expedition to deal with depredations of the New York tribe. The Mohawk were formidable and feared so the adventure involved serious risk. According to Duffy and some others, it was an unmitigated disaster.

Ill planned and ill executed from start to finish, the Indians from the East came home weakened and some bands were effectively ruined. The defeat was so all encompassing that the Quaboag were happy to have the English settle as protection against the bad boys to the west.

Leo Bonfanti, author of several pamphlet size booklets of English-Native history from settlement to conclusion of the Indian war in Maine, viewed the Mohawk-Massachusetts encounter in a different light. In Volume II of his BIOGRAPHIES AND LEGENDS of the NEW ENGLAND INDIANS, he essentially agrees with Duffy and other writers up until the end of the battle.

According to Bonfanti, under their leader, Chikataubut who fell in the encounter, the Massachusett counterattack defeated the Mohawk. The reverse was enough to cause them to request mediation from the Dutch and English.

This is an important, as Duffy notes the Quaboag welcomed protective English settlement. If they had lost heavily against the Mohawk, siding with KingPhilip could only have been suicidal as they would now have two mortal enemies.

Success against the Mohawk might have allowed them some confidence in their own ability against the colonists.

Then again, maybe none of that mattered. Michael J. Tougias, in his novel of the era, Until I Have No Country, writes of an older Indian speaking to a younger warrior, telling him that the tribes would lose the war. The youthful man asks him why fight then. His reply was that they had, more or less, to do something

That has its own logic, somewhat. Duffy details the fate of the Nipucks of the Quinnebaug who tried to stay out of the war. They avoided the fate of the Quaboag which was immediate death, slavery or exile. In the end it did not matter. They were effaced from the land as were their neighbors to the north, albeit in slow motion with all legal niceties observed, sometimes.

It is fascinating to think that events that shaped where we live played out almost outside our doors. The battles that happened here were local events, but also involved the three major imperial powers of the day, England, France and The Dutch Republic.

It is conceivable that the Quaboag who ambushed the colonials in Wheeler's Surprise could have wiped them out, had it not been for the “Praying Indians” aiding the English. Had they destroyed the remnant on Foster's Hill as well, it would have been an immense victory, but in the end, would have probably changed little.

The Quaboag and Nipmuck Indians is far more than battles in scope, and even if you've read other books, this will be worth your while. The author has a previous work, Around Pottequadic, that looks at the native people and settlers more to the Ware and Palmer area. I look forward to reading it.