1. Visit during the thaw.
2. Contacts, Miscellaneous.
1. Visit during the thaw.
I visited the Charles River White Geese Sunday at the ghetto to which a reprehensible city and state have confined them on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge, MA, USA.
This is their Destroyed Nesting Area.
For most of the last 32 years, the Charles River White Geese lived in a mile long habitat centered on the BU Bridge.
Most of their days were spent at Magazine Beach west of the BU Bridge eating and sleeping. In bad weather and when they were nesting and raising their babies, the Charles River White Geese went to their Nesting Area east of the BU Bridge.
They have been loved by commuters and residents.
The now Destroyed Nesting Area provides excellent protection from the elements, but not from reprehensible governments.
The protection from the elements is provided by meadow sloping to the river. On the south side of the slope is the Charles River with a railroad bridge above it. One the west side of the slope is the BU Bridge with its support under it forming a protective wall. On the north side is the slope with above the slope, Memorial Drive rising in the air above an on ramp. On the east side is the raised railroad with a supporting slope under it.
The state department “responsible” for the area and the City of Cambridge decided to “improve” the area.
They did a lot of terrible things to the area, ALL of which were kept secret from the public and were either lied about through omission or through direct lies which were the opposite of their claims in public. One excellent example of the outrage: the non stop claim of the key manager that he “had no intention to do any harm” to the Charles River White Geese.
When he started starving them, he repeated this outrageous lie. It was printed by the Boston Sunday Globe in its report of the commencement of starvation to the right of a massive photo showing a resident goose overwhelmed by earth moving equipment.
Most recently, the Cambridge Machine honored this embodiment of destruction and corrupt lying by having him present his proposal to double the destruction. A proposal which the Cambridge Machine fought for with typical corrupt behavior.
The Charles River White Geese have been barred from their food of most of the last 32 years, blocked from Magazine Beach and, at the same time as being blocked from Magazine Beach were blocked from their alternate feeding area to the east across from the Hyatt Regency Hotel.
Most recently, they even have been blocked from the tiny bit of grass 30 feet from the Destroyed Nesting Area under Memorial Drive.
Here are two photos of the Charles River between freezes.
Here are a few photos of the Charles River White Geese in their most cherished place, under the large tree at the far corner of the Destroyed Nesting Area kitty corner from the intersection of the BU Bridge and Memorial Drive.
During the worst of the days, they curl up in balls protected by their down coats.
This area has been devastated by agents of city and state. The most recent was the outrage in which this most cherished area was turned into a parking lot by railroad workers who were too lazy to park under Memorial Drive, 20 feet from the Destroyed Nesting Area. During the work, (1) the Charles River White Geese were excluded from their most cherished area, (2) the ground was crushed in by repeated car parking, (3) crushed stone was dumped into this sensitive ground, and (4) ground vegetation was destroyed. After they left, more crushed stone was added.
This most sensitive area was not destroyed during the recent BU Bridge work. It was held sacred and then destroyed afterwards. The areas were separated by plastic walls which were left poisoning the destroyed nesting area after the work was done and which remain as a memorial to this day.
“Vegetation remediation” in the BU Bridge work area varied between bushes which would not live and bushes which look like they could turn into the impenetrable wall of bushes was which starves them at Magazine Beach. That impenetrable wall is the way the state and city implement promises of a “meadow” to the Charles River.
There are some bushes which seem to be neutral.
The thickest items in the following photos are the remnants of the native vegetation which used to fill most of the Destroyed Nesting Area until that vegetation was destroyed.
The orange wall is the latest step in starvation, keeping the Charles River White Geese from the grass on the other side of that wall under the Memorial Drive overpass. The brick structure above the orange wall is the Memorial Drive overpass.
Part was destroyed before the BU Bridge work apparently by the falsely named Charles River Conservancy or by employees of the state / city or by employees of their friends.
The rest was destroyed by the BU Bridge project, all of the destruction more than fifty feet from the BU Bridge was unnecessary. The area within 50 feet of the BU Bridge has, mostly, been untouched by the supposed remediation and looks like it was left deliberately barren.
Hopefully, nature will remediate on its own. Unfortunately, the city and state and their friends keep coming in and furthering the destruction.
The Cambridge Machine is aggressively fighting to keep this outrage. The Cambridge Machine lies of their concern for the Charles River and tells people to look at everything except the problems. Look at a building which has not been used for 80 years.
And to reemphasize their constant lies of concern, the Cambridge Machine conducted a meeting on doubling the outrages. The Cambridge Machine was faced with a meeting in January 2013 which might have voted responsibly. So after devoting a full meeting to a lot of negative discussion, the Cambridge Machine postponed things to their February 2013 meeting which the conducted on April 23, driving away folks concerned about the Charles River. At the meeting they deferred the responsible discussion to the last 10 minutes of the meeting and submitted a complicated motion which had been kept secret until those last 10 minutes. So a meeting from which concerned folks had been driven consisted of a bunch of people totally unconcerned about the matter and some puppets.
Among other things, the fine print to the fine print supported destruction of hundreds of trees between Magazine Beach and the Longfellow Bridge, the second bridge to the west. It clearly doubled the irresponsible destruction they keep telling people not to look at, and destroys the responsible parking lot needed for that building which has not been used for 80 years and needed for the adjacent picnic area which the Cambridge Machine claims to love.
Oh, year, the entire thing, of course, continues the heartless starvation of the Charles River White Geese as part of the outrages the Machine tells people not to look at.
This is Governor Patrick’s House Bill H3332, funding of “Historical Parkways” in the amount of about $22 million. The less hidden part of the lie talks about “underpasses” away from the tree destruction. The “underpasses” are opposed by the Department of Transportation for environmental irresponsibility, among other things. This less secret part of the fine print runs 2 to 4 million dollars. To the extent the real purpose of “underpasses” is mentioned by any of its supporters, this area to which 10 times the money is allocated is referred to as associated paths.
The pitch of the Cambridge Machine is, if you love the Charles River, you will ignore the problems inflicted by Cambridge and the State, and ignore the expansion of the problems which they corruptly “supported” by the April 23, 2013 excuse for a vote. If you love the Charles River, according to the Cambridge Machine, you will look at one building which has not been used for 80 years and look at nothing else.
You will also, according to the Cambridge Machine, praise the Cambridge Machine and the folks pulling its strings as environmental saints.
The Cambridge Machine on the Charles River is repeating tactics which have so far achieved the destruction of acres of irreplaceable woodlands in the publicly owned portion of the Alewife reservation near the western terminus of the Red Line subway and near the eastern end of the east - west superhighway known as Route 2. The machine is very clearly using comparable tactics in both locations.
The big difference at Alewife is that the fraud has been sufficiently successful that corrupt voting tactics, to the best of my knowledge, have never been necessary.
2. Contacts, Miscellaneous.
Massachusetts Governor’s Office email form: http://www.mass.gov/governor/constituentservices/contact/.
State environmental people, DES Hotline: ESF.Hotline@state.ma.us.
MassDOT Accelerated Bridges Program: 857-368-8904 or Stephanie.Boundy@state.ma.us.
All Massachusetts Legislators’ emails: http://charlesriverwhitegeeseblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/emails-for-all-massachusetts.html.
Cambridge, MA, USA city councilors: Council@cambridgema.gov.
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For people listening to Boston Sierra Club endorsements of environmentally destructive members of and candidates for the Cambridge City Council, you should be aware that
(1) using the world’s definition of “environmentalism,” there are no environmentally responsible members of the Cambridge City Council; Cambridge’s definition is that environmentalists protect that which Cambridge does not feel like destroying; the Cambridge pols are oh, so pious using their secret, fraudulent definition;
(2) the school committee member running for Cambridge City Council fought for the outrages at the Magazine Beach playing fields;
(a) his indignant explanation is that he claims to be only responsible for the good stuff;
(b) that explanation is combined with exactly no demonstration of any meaningful opposition whatsoever to the outrages; and
(c) as is usual in Cambridge, his claims of “improvements” are belied by reality. The playing fields have been decreased in size by his project!!!!! This is to drain off the poisons being dumped to keep alive sickly introduced grasses which replaced healthy grass that survived the better part of a century without poisons; and
(3) there are Cambridge Machine activists very visible and apparently very active in the Boston Sierra Club.
If you are talking to a person associated with the Boston Sierra Club, do a credibility check. Ask if they are familiar with the “Urban Ring” rapid transit proposal. This is a subway proposal designed to link the existing subway spokes. I have been working on it since 1985. Cambridge raised the project in a comment to an environmental Impact Statement a few months ago.
If the Boston Sierra Club “expert” answers “yes,” that he / she is familiar with the Urban Ring rapid transit proposal, ask how many rail options there are. If the answer is “one,” you are getting the flat out lie put out by the City of Cambridge.
Cambridge’s flat out lie is that, of the TWO rail options, the only one that exists is the environmentally destructive streetcar option which the City of Cambridge supports. This option would be highly destructive to the environment near the Destroyed Nesting Area of the Charles River White Geese.
The reality is that THE STATE LEGISLATURE HAS SUBSIDIZED THE OTHER OPTION, the responsible Orange Line / heavy rail option, the Kenmore crossing. The state legislature has subsidized the expansion of Yawkey Station as part of the massive Fenway Park area project which has gotten recent press.
Cambridge’s nonsensical proposal would move Yawkey Station three blocks. The Cambridge proposal would not work without moving Yawkey Station. The Kenmore Crossing uses the now subsidized and being expanded Yawkey Station as part of a brilliant megastation.
You should immediately respond to such nonsense from a Sierra Club “expert” by having nothing more to do with this person. Whether the person is stupid or venal is irrelevant, the person has no credibility and is not worthy of your time.
It is frequently difficult to pin these irresponsible people down in general. The deviant behavior in my test is extreme. They are pious in their demands that, if you are politically correct and pro environment, you have to rubber stamp them. Please do not waste your time arguing about destruction they can try to wiggle around.
Turn your back on them and walk away fast.
